The warped logic of the Oakland Raiders

http://www.nationalfootballpost.com/Wilson-Gannon-offers-to-help-Raiders.html

Good stuff there about how the Raiders don't want Gannon anywhere near their franchise. Why? Because he dared to criticize them during a game earlier this season. Here's the money quote:

"Maybe it's Rich that needs the help," Herrera said.

Umm, hmm. Seven straight 10+ loss seasons says it's not Gannon who needs help but rather the Oakland Raiders. Not in the la-la land that Al Davis has created, though. The land where everything is perenially the head coach's fault. He's considering firing Tom Cable, really? Are we gonna go through a coach a year or what?

I love this story about JaMarcus Russell leaving for Las Vegas after being excused from a team meeting. An old cliche in sports lingo is how so-and-so is the first one in and the last one out. Well, in JaMarcus' case I think it's safe to say he's the last one in and the first one out. I can still remember a quote from Scott Wright of NFL Draft Countdown, when he said he had Brady Quinn ranked ahead of Russell because with Quinn you don't have to worry about him giving it his all. That rings so true today. Quinn may be a bust as well so far in the NFL, but it's not because he hasn't worked at it. You cannot say the same for Russell.

The fact that the Raiders are even considering bringing Russell back is a flipping joke. He's Ryan Leaf without the shoving incident involving a reporter (and frankly, JaMarcus just doesn't have the fire in his belly to shove a reporter). His fumble at the Baltimore 23 with about 9 minutes left about single-handedly ended the Houston Texans' season (imagine being a Texans fan, and your season partially rides on Russell having to engineer a comeback against Baltimore). Bruce Gradkowski and Charlie Frye, those legends of the gridiron, came in and not only outperformed Russell, but did so by an embarrassingly wide margin. Louis Murphy and Chaz Schillens (who was out for most of Russell's starts, lucky him) all of a sudden started producing. The man is the biggest bust in NFL draft history, and in Al Davis' world that means he's the QB of the future, while Gannon isn't even allowed in production meetings and Tom Cable (potentially) gets fired.

The Raiders have gone from being comically bad (like the 2-14 2006 season) to just plain sad. This was a proud franchise, and Al Davis is currently running it about as poorly as anyone has ever run a pro sports franchise. The Detroit Lions don't have seven straight seasons with 10+ losses. The Rams, the Browns, name any sad-sack franchise and they've all won more than 6 games in a season more recently than the Raiders.