Don't get down on the raiders too much, they are a 5 win team this season. They are rebuilding. 4 years from now, they will have hired a new, experienced coach, revamped their defense and have a sh!tload of new draft picks. I know don't like hearing such talk, but I am realistic about my team. The G.M. blew up the team so he could create it in the image he wants. That takes time
He'll fail... and destroy the fan base in the process
Why do you think he'll fail? He had long-term success in Green Bay, and seems to be following the same formula he used there.
...we could of hired Jon Gruden and did something with DMC and continue the progress made over the last 3 years!
Not so sure we could have hired Gruden. He had just re-signed a long-term contract with the network, and I think he prefers his career at an analyst. He gets to travel around and mingle with every team, all the players he likes. He's in the limelight on prime time football each week. I doubt that he'd be interested in taking on a project like the Raiders. I think that if a coach DOES have success in Oakland, it would be a great feather in his cap....since no one has had much success there in a decade now. And if you go back to before those 3 or 4 years we had success in the Gruden era....we didn't have much success for another 17 years.
I understand what you're saying, but I think we need to give McKenzie and Allen a few years to see what happens. They inherited a team that needed a lot of work, players, and dicipline (penalties).....had no cap space, etc. etc. It's not fair to judge them after an off season with only a few draft choices, no cap space...instituting a new blocking scheme, new defense etc. I would have loved it if we had had instant success, but I'm not that surprised that we're 1-3 at this point. We've played some tough teams....and we did beat Pittsburgh, and would have beaten the Chargers if our long snapper hadn't gotten hurt. Four games is way too short to judge them in my opinion. All the teams who are on top now were pretty crappy for a long time before they started doing well. Yeah, we've been crappy for a long time now, and everyone is tired of waiting....but Al was short on time and sold some of our future to try to roll the dice and get another shot at a Superbowl. It didn't work, so now we're suffering from the result. Players he picked that didn't pan out, draft choices and money that were spent.
I know that the draft is a crap-shoot, and I've heard that McKenzie shares that opinion. That's why he favors trading down in the draft so he can get more picks. Since all picks don't pan out, the more picks you have the more chance to strike gold in his opinion. As long as your research team does a good job finding promising prospects, and you give yourself a better than 50% chance at finding starters....then his philosophy of getting lots of picks should pay off over a few drafts. So I'm just going to wait and see for a while (but it's hard!).
