Alright so I'll say what everyone already knows, the Oakland Raiders are a horrible team, except they really aren't. The football team is not the issue, the level of talent on the roster is ridiculous for how bad they play. They have a promising young Quarterback in Derek Carr, a strong Running Back tandem with Maurice Jones-Drew and Darren McFadden, not to mention Marcel Reece. They even have a couple of good receivers with James Jones and Denarius Moore. And after this off season they have a defense full of talent. Despite all of this they have the 24th ranked scoring defense, and the 29th ranked scoring offense. The majority of the blame for these poor performances should not go on the players.
The blame should fall squarely on General Manager Reggie McKenzie and former Head Coach Dennis Allen. Last year they traded then starting Quarterback Carson Palmer to Arizona, and then brought in Matt Flynn to be the starter. Flynn then lost out to Terrele Pryor in the pre season. This looked like a great move as Pryor played well early on, but eventually he got injured. They then went with backup Matt McGloin, who also played well and was then given the starting job. Going into this year they had a very interesting Quarterback competition going on between Pryor and McGloin, and then the Raiders traded Pryor to Seattle. And then decided to not go with McGloin either, instead opting to go first with Matt Schaub, and then with Derek Carr. Over the last season and a half the Raiders have blown up and restarted the Quarterback position Six Times (From Palmer to Flynn, Flynn to Pryor, Pryor to McGloin, McGloin to Schaub, and from Schaub to Carr.)
This Helter Skelter handling of the Quarterback position is both the fault of the coach and GM. I will give Dennis Allen credit for being able to roll with the punches and adapt to very different Quarterbacks. However he should have put his foot down at some point and said, this is my Quarterback. Hell, they've had at least 2 or 3 good Quarterbacks over the last season and a half. It is both Mark Davis and Reggie McKenzie's fault for expecting their coach to be able to win immediately with a cast off backup and a rookie as their options at Quarterback. This reminded me of what happened in Jacksonville during Blaine Gabbert's rookie year. The GM essentially threw Jack Del Rio under the bus by getting rid of the established starting Quarterback David Garrard and making Del Rio ride or die with an unproven rookie and a career backup.
To me, if they were going to fire Dennis Allen and reboot the Quarterback position again, they should have done it during the offseason, not in week 5 of the Regular Season. Now they are stuck with Tony Sparano until the end of the season, which means two things. Derek Carr and the passing game will struggle and we will see Darren McFadden in the Wildcat formation at least once this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment