Sometimes when you play well enough to win, you still lose..
Sometimes when you play awful enough to lose, you still win.
That’s all I really learned last Sunday as our Raiders battled hard for a victory we never really deserved.

It’s now apparent to me that JaMarcus Russell may not be the Quarterback all of us have envisioned him to be. The kid currently can’t throw an out to save his life, is consistently inaccurate, makes poor decisions in critical moments and never runs quickly enough to avoid a sack or gain a few yards..
Whew! There, I said it!!! It’s really hard for a former fan of the year to become negative sometimes. Sure, I hear the boos, the taunting and the cursing directed at Mr. JR weekly, but I’ve always have been the first fan to ask for others to believe in the guy and to also have patience. “Boos aren’t going to make him play better, Asses! He’ll prove it to you soon..you’ll see!” I scream. Bam, the kid bombs one to Murphy against SD for a TD. “I told you all!!! I told ya!!!”
Hell, after that pass? Not only did I think I WAS a former Jedi, but I also thought our worries were over..
Then we see THIS kind of game…ugh.

Damn Jam, it’s not like the Lord of the Sith wants you to fail, I just want you to improve, son!! But after witnessing a year and 2 games worth of starts, a harsh percentage, poor overthrows, miscues, etc….
Eh, it’s still early. Maybe I’ll hold my final Judgment until a later time. We still need to see what he can do with his number one weapon on the field; Chaz Schilens (who may or may not be available this weekend). Now that Russell has an improved line, a solid backfield and trust worthy TE’s? There should be no one to stop him this time…
Unless… it’s himself, of course.

Summary:
Missing high, low and everywhere in-between, the overall No. 1 draft choice of 2007 completed only 7 of 24 passes for 109 yards. But Russell came into focus when he had to, engineering a 69-yard scoring march in the final 2 minutes for a wildly improbable 13-10 victory over mistake-prone Kansas City.
The Chiefs out-gained the Raiders (1-1) 409-166, while Russell became just the second quarterback since the start of the 1997 season to try 20 or more passes and complete less than 30 percent of them but still win.
And it’s the first time in the Raiders’ 50-year history they’ve emerged with a victory after giving up more than 400 yards and gaining fewer than 200 themselves. May the force be with us!
“I felt really good. The ball was just coming out different for me,” Russell said. “Other than that, I felt good.”
Riiiiiiiiiight.
Russell’s teammates knew it was a fight from start to finish.
From the first quarter all the way to the fourth quarter it was a struggle for us, until the last 2 or 3 minutes left in the game,” said Darren McFadden, whose 5-yard touchdown run around left end with 1:07 left made the difference.
“It’s probably one of the strangest wins. But a win is a win.”
Cassel, making his long-awaited Kansas City debut after being out a month with a knee injury, had given the Chiefs (0-2) the lead with a 29-yard touchdown strike to Dwayne Bowe with 2:38 to go. Cassel wound up throwing for 241 yards.
Oakland’s victory may not have seemed so improbable to coach Todd Haley.
“When you have nine penalties, two turnovers and a couple other lapses, you’re not going to win most of the time,” he said. “We didn’t get the result we wanted. We’re going to have a smart team here. Nine penalties and a couple of those things don’t reflect a smart team. We’re going to get back to work because we’re going to have a smart team here.”
But Tom Cable agreed it was about as strange as they come.
“It’s as poor as I think you can play offensively and still find a way at the end there to win a football game,” said the Oakland coach.
While Cassel clearly outplayed his Oakland counterpart, he did make one mistake that Russell did not. Russell avoided interceptions while two of Cassel’s passes wound up in the arms of Oakland defensive back Michael Huff.
“We had things that happened throughout the day that we hurt ourselves with, whether it was offense or defense or special teams,” Cassel said. “The Raiders did a good job and made the plays when it counted. Therefore, they’re going home with the victory.”
Russell hit Louis Murphy for 19 yards and connected with Todd Watkins for 28 on the nine-play touchdown drive. McFadden took a pitch and sped untouched around the right side of the Chiefs defense.
“I knew that we left plays out there on or previous drives before, so we had to come up with something,” Russell said.
Cassel, who missed the opener with a left knee injury, hit a key third-down pass in the nine-play, 72-yard drive that gave the Chiefs their only lead of the second half.
The Chiefs crowded the line of scrimmage and dared Russell to beat them with his arm, and until the final drive Russell seemed bent on making the strategy work. At the end of the third, he had 35 yards passing and the Raiders had only 77 yards of offense to 313 for the Chiefs.
But a host of Chiefs mistakes, including nine penalties for 70 yards and atrocious clock management — and Sebastian Janikowski’s two field goals — provided a 6-3 Oakland lead.
Also key to Oakland’s winning drive was a roughing call on Wallace Gilberry, who fell onto Russell while he was on the ground.
“When we had the personal foul penalty we kind of were in a position to put them in a bit of a difficult position, and we let them off the hook,” Haley said. “They made plays at the end.”
Brandon Flowers, the Chiefs’ No. 1 cornerback, returned after being out almost a month with a shoulder injury. But he was also guilty of one of the many mistakes by Kansas City when late in the first half he let an interception sail right through his hands.
With nothing but open field in front of him, Flowers would probably have waltzed into the end zone.
“Every loss hurts. This loss kills you,” he said.

Pshhh, doesn’t this sort of banter sound familiar?

FYI The horrible Broncos are currently in first place in the AFC West. It’s time to take them down a notch..
DOMINATE THE RIGHT WAY THIS TIME!!!!!
-DR

Ps If anyone would like a picture, please visit me at the “Raiders Fan Convention”
hosted by Ricky’s sports bar in San Leandro; Saturday, September 26th !

The hours of the event are from 11am-4pm. We are going to have Prize giveaways every half hour and are planning to have me and other “Super Fans” doing the drawings and presenting the prizes.

The “Super Fan Roundtable” will go from 1pm-2pm where “us supers” will be available for questions, stories, photo ops and Raider fan charm…
Uh, do we really have charm? Find out Saturday!!!