Westside's Treasure Map

Setting The Course for 21st Century Football

Long ago lived a pirate Captain of mine named Captain Raider. He was a manly man who showed no fear in facing his enemies. One day while we were sailing the seven seas, and while in the Crow's Nest on lookout duty, I spotted an enemy ship and the crew became frantic. Captain Raider bellowed, "Bring me my Red Shirt.'' The First Mate quickly retrieved the captain's red shirt and whilst wearing the bright red frock Captain Raider led us into battle and we defeated the enemy.

Later on that day, while back in the Look Out Nest I spotted not one, but two Royal Navy ships. The Captain again called for his red shirt and once again, though the fighting was fierce, we were victorious over the two ships. That evening we all sat around on the deck recounting the day's triumphs and one of our men asked the captain, ''Sir, why do you call for your red shirt before battle?" The captain replied, ''If I am wounded in the attack, the shirt will not show my blood and, thus, you men will continue to fight, unafraid.''

All of us pirates sat in silence and marveled at the courage of such a brave man as Captain Raider. As dawn came the next morning I, your backside lookout, spotted not one, not two, but TEN Royal Navy ships approaching from the far horizon. The crew stared at the Captain and waited for his usual response. But this time Captain Raider calmly shouted, ''Get me me brown pants.'' (LOL! "Me Brown pants!")

I use this joke to refer to the Raider roster and to correlate it to just one lone gun boat versus ten gun boats when I say we have been out-matched, out-gunned, and out-numbered over the last six seasons. It would be nice to suffer from a convenient type of amnesia in order to forget these facts; however, for those of us who remember everything Raider, only winning will ease away the bad memories. Our rosters have been full of questionable parts with as many as ten to eleven weak links each year for over the last six seasons; we have not had a complete roster or even come close to one since 2002.

To Al Davis’s credit, it has not been a lack of will to improve, a lack of effort, or a lack of money spent. The numbers being spent now, though, are much like Bush- & Obamanomics--which is to say, they are an attempt to spend your way out of deficient and broken organizational structures that produce no results or improvement at the end of the day. You know, like trying to rescue yourself with credit cards. These attempts have not worked, nor will they in the future for the simple reason that this roster has twenty-two starters when any one deficient position can cost you a championship.

Not since my friend, the 2002 NFL Executive of the year and former agent, Bruce Allen managed the contracts and signed our players has it been done right. Now the organization needs help here in a major way. This, along with a General Manager, would go a long way toward turning this organization around. It has been said (and it is true) that now-a-days it is organizations that win Super bowls, not just teams.

We have good people in Alameda at Raiders’ HQ doing a great job and all should be retained. But we need a "capologist", who can bridge the football operation's and the business division's gap with quality players under sensible cap numbers. We need men in football operations who are not afraid to disagree with Al Davis in player/personnel decisions, if Davis will allow it. If he will allow it, then we can finally take these brown pants off, man up with silver and black gear, and get back to our winning ways.

There is only one thing worse than brown pants and that is a brown nose. Al Davis needs to make room for disagreement and dissent, the kind he had with John Gruden that created a type of creative agitation that resulted in winning.

I used to believe that our team’s woes were solely roster-related, but in truth they are only roster-related in part as evidenced by what the league is calling "insane salary contract numbers out of Oakland." It is not yet certain how an entire roster, which is deficient in many areas, can be built around these super inflated contract numbers.

Look no farther than the Pittsburgh Steelers and what you see in their blue print and treasure map for wining championships; it is a traditional type of stability and loyalty, not necessarily to the players who come and go, but to the fans, to the organizational people and to their coaching staffs. They have a loyalty foundation, continuity and tradition of organizational people that we once had. I call upon the Oakland Raiders to return to a common sense and loyalty based organizational approach, not only to their football operations and coaching staff, but to their business and administrative operations too.

With all due respect to Mr. Davis, it would be healthy to delegate more and to focus on laying a blueprint and a vision for the future. Delegate more to Raider Defensive Coordinators and coaching staff and give them the autonomy for game-day plans. Delegate in general and groom people in the Football Operations, Business and Administration departments for the future. The Raiders are in dire need of a "Capologist" and a General Manager, positions that Mr. Davis, himself, conceded we needed, and then later changed his mind.

A succession plan is needed, if you will, and there have been many a former Raider expressing their intent and desire to come back to the Raiders and help right this ship in different capacities; namely Steve Wisneiwski and Tim Brown. It is people such as these, who bleed Silver and Black, who know what worked before and what will work again. The Raider inner circle of power needs to expand and grow, not dwindle and die. The mantle must be passed down and the baton must be passed on to those such as Brown and Wisneiwski, great players who gave their youth and bodies to serve the organization. These brothers have in them the power and energy to right the ship in Oakland, more so than a decade of off-season roster moves and contemplations. This needs to take place, or we will dwell in the cold basement with the Detroit Lions' of the National Footbal League.

Proverbs 29:18: Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. How many seasons must be lost until these truths are realized as truths? Jesus once cautioned while teaching that new wine cannot be contained in old wineskins, because the new wine will burst the old wineskins.

Our favorite team is in desperate need of new organizational wineskins, people with expanded responsibilities through delegation from Mr. Davis. This is to say we need new structures and containers for the new wine of this twenty-first century football. We can talk rosters for the next ten years, but at the heart of our renaissance or not, is that twenty-first century football will no longer fit into the old wineskins of the 1960’s and 1970’s structures.

You want some of evidence of this? It is not just the out of this universe salary numbers for below average players as evident by last years off season. Gabril Wilson’s release as the second leading tackler on this team makes no sense whatsoever because now not only do we not have any Strong Side Linebackers or any Defensive Tackles who can space-eat and two -gap, we now have no fricken’ Strong Safety. It is hard to imagine the second worst team in the league against the run, getting any worse, but we just did. Only a football operations department and coaching staff of empty shirts and yes-men would allow such moves and transactions without an all-out open mutiny. Let me concede that I am sure there were some circumstances we were not aware of here in the case of Wilson. The point here is that the roster is not improving with moves like this, it is making it even worse than it is. The problem is also that it is not just the roster either, it is at the root cause systemic from an organizational standpoint. Problems which could and should be quick fixes with the afore mentioned recommendations that many of us hope to see.

My call is not for mutiny, or to abandon ship; it is just for new wineskins, new containers, new vision, new positions, new blood and expanded roles for the competent professionals at Raider HQ. And more important, once we have the new positions, like the Steelers, we need to retain them. We need to retain our good coaches and organizational people when we find them and have them already.

To quote super bowl champ and boyhood Raider fan Gibril Wilson, "If you don't have a vision and you're just trying to plug in players, then you're always going to get the same results."

I am just a pirate who see's clearly ahead, from the lookout Crow's Nest reporting this: We are off course, we need to recalibrate our navigational tools, refer to our maps and chart a clear course and vision for the future with detail, because I can see the rocks twenty miles ahead.

Raider On Nation

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