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The Roar

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The Oakland Raiders are set for a woeful 0-16 season

Tyvon Branch and the Oakland Raiders may be set for a move. (Photo: Jeffrey Beall)
Expert
28th October, 2014
17

The NFL is considered by some to be the most competitive league in the world of sports. Shocking upsets are commonplace and in any week any team, within reason, can beat any other.

It’s not easy to finish 16-0, just like it’s not easy to finish 0-16.

It takes bad management, a substandard roster, poor coaching, an uncompromising schedule, a few key injuries and just the right amount of bad luck to put together an “imperfect season”.

The 2008 Detroit Lions are regarded as the worst team in NFL history. They hold the record for most losses in a single season and are the first non-expansion team to lose every game in a full season since World War II.

The Lions ended 2008 having lost 23 of their last 24 regular season games, going back to the previous year. Detroit truly were awful. Their roster was shockingly bad, save for a young Calvin Johnson who somehow had 1300 yards receiving and 12 touchdowns.

It’s been a few years since we’ve had a team to compare to the infamous ’08 Lions, but the Oakland Raiders have tentatively thrown their hat into the ring of shame and mediocrity.

The Raiders are a fundamentally bad team, and they have been that way for more than a decade. But is this current crop of Raiders among the worst teams in NFL history? Are they destined for imperfection?

Unfortunately for the long-suffering fans of the silver and black, all signs point to yes. Let’s have a look at a few key stats for the 2014 Oakland Raiders through seven games.

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The Raiders are 0-7 and the only winless team in the NFL. They rank last in rushing yards with 69 yards a game despite throwing $3.5 million at Maurice Jones-Drew in the off-season to compete with Darren McFadden in the backfield.

They are 22nd in passing despite constantly playing from behind. They are 28th in turnover differential with minus six. They are second last in total yards of offense, and last in total points.

They are just agonisingly bad.

Raiders fans have seen some of these rankings and figures before, so why is that 2014 may be the Raiders worst season to date?

Firstly, the schedule. Usually a team as bad as the Raiders can catch a break and play a team almost as bad as them at home to break their duck. It just hasn’t worked out that way for the Raiders. The home games, the ones the organisation would have been budgeting to win, have been against teams with a combined record of 12-2.

They sent one game to London, where they were resoundingly beaten by the Dolphins, and have lost winnable games away against the Jets, Patriots and Browns.

And things are only going to get harder. The Raiders face more difficult games at home to end the season, hosting the Broncos (6-1), Chiefs (4-3), 49ers (4-3) and the Bills (5-3), and are on the road against the Seahawks, Chargers, Chiefs and Broncos.

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The Raiders’ only chance to win a game this season might come away against the Rams in Week 13 or at home against the Bills in Week 16. Realistically they could get blown out in both. The reason for that brings me to my next point. Talent, or lack thereof.

For some reason in the off-season the Raiders went out and signed a bunch of well-known, possibly over the hill veterans. They were fed up with drafting busts and thought they would instead pay overs for a bunch of players with little more to give but open to one last payday before they retire.

The Raiders finally had some cap space so they went mad in free agency, signing Justin Tuck, LaMarr Woodley, Charles Woodson, Maurice Jones-Drew, Antonio Smith, Donald Penn and Matt Schaub among others to try and add established talent to the roster.

I remember seeing a tweet in the pre-season that read, “The Oakland Raiders have the best team of the 2009 season”. If only it weren’t 2014.

The problem is very few of these moves have worked out. James Jones has been excellent and has arguably made rookie quarterback Derek Carr look much better than he is at times. Jones-Drew has been ineffective, Schaub, like high-priced free agent Matt Flynn before him, has hardly played, and the Raiders run defense has struggled to contain backs while giving up 130 yards a game.

Even when the Raiders play well, like they did against the Chargers in Week 6, they cannot sustain it for 60 minutes. And that comes back to preparation, execution and coaching.

The Raiders cut ties with Dennis Allen after an 0-4 start this season and placed Tony Sparano in charge on an interim basis. Sparano stepped in, shook things up and buried a football, but the appointment has so far failed to spark the Raiders sufficiently enough to provide a win.

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And, even without Allen, the coaching staff continue to make questionable decisions. They threw the ball a whopping 56 times and ran it 22 times against the worst run defense in the NFL in Cleveland in Week 8.

But these issues are just the tip of the iceberg for a franchise that has been stuck in a rut since John Gruden was traded to the Buccaneers in 2002. The Raiders need to be completely rebuilt and relocated. Their roster needs an overhaul, their coaching staff needs new blood and their management need to be held accountable for years of failure.

In the meantime the Raiders need to start focusing on beating the Rams, the only team they have left to play with a losing record, or the Bills. If they don’t the 2014 team will go down in infamy as the worst bunch of a horrible decade.

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