Today's Raiders too bad to be villains
Posted: Sunday, Nov. 09, 2008
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/panthers/story/314120.html
The NFL is more interesting when the Oakland Raiders win. Every sport needs a villain and the Raiders annually volunteer.
Who's the villain now? The Dallas Cowboys are easy to dislike because they are pompous, because they collect individuals and because the owner has spent so much time undergoing plastic surgery he is beginning to resemble Cher.
But the Cowboys are too prissy to be villains. They like themselves too much. A true villain doesn't care.
Alas, the only acts of villainy the Raiders commit are against their fans. The organization loves to remind you of the damage it has done. Team of the Decades, shouts the cover of the media guide.
Oakland has 21 playoff appearances, three Super Bowl victories and 15 players in the Hall of Fame.
But which decades are we talking about? The silver and black's successes occurred so long ago they were televised in black and white.
Oakland last won a Super Bowl in 1984 and last made the playoffs in 2003. This season they've lost six games, one head coach and a very good cornerback having a very bad season. They cut DeAngelo Hall, eight games into his Raider career, this week.
The last 5½ seasons Oakland has won 21 games. Detroit has won 26.
Still, today's matchup between 6-2 Carolina and 2-6 Oakland at McAfee Coliseum is much more interesting than Carolina-Detroit in Charlotte next week.
This is the New South versus the Old Guard. And even though the Raiders are perpetually down and out, they are still the team for which Kenny “the Snake” Stabler threw, Ted Hendricks tackled and Al Davis owns.
Davis is 79, but has the patience of a high school sophomore. A typical greeting to a head coach: “I'm Al Davis and you're fired.” Everybody but Al is a temp.
Did he ever send a play into the huddle?
“He didn't,” says Panther quarterback Josh McCown, who started nine games for Oakland last season. “He was 100 percent involved and he knew what was going on and he had the idea of what he wanted to do offensively and defensively.”
He never said, “Run this or you're fired, on two”?
He never did, McCown insists.
“I got to sit with him and talk with him at a couple different meetings,” the quarterback says. “Regardless of things that have been said about him now and lately, I still have a lot of respect and it was an honor to sit with him because of what he's meant for the league and what he's done for our business that we choose to be in.”
Because McCown appreciates the excellence for which the silver and black long stood, the quarterback says it was cool to wear the colors.
“I'm a better person for it,” he says.
Is it also cool to be an ex-Raider?
“Yeah, yeah,” says McCown. “But I'm an ex-Lion, I'm an ex-Cardinal, you can put that ex behind a lot of things. But saying I'm an ex-Raider is a lot different than saying I'm an ex-Lion or ex-Cardinal.”
Unfortunately, even the Raiders are ex-Raiders. They've abandoned the independence and the daring that once made them great. Stabler is gone, and he's never coming back.
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