Oakland Raiders surrender

Photo by Patrick A. Patterson/TFDSsports.com

The Raiders had that look of defeat from early on in this game. With few exceptions, they looked like they were a team who is content to play out the season and collect their paychecks. There did not seem to be a commitment to excellence on the field what so ever.

This sentiment of surrender was echoed by team captain Nnamdi Asomugha after the game.

You just wonder how many people care, how many people are upset.

Asomugha is probably the most resepected player on the Raider roster, and he essentially threw his teammates under the proverbial bus. For him to essentially say that the team does not care, that says everything that one would need to know about the goings on in Alameda and why the Raiders have reached the lows they have reched in recent history.

You can't go out and play the way we played and expect to win, to expect to do well. We were all over the place. Its stuff that you don't even know, blown assignments, blown coverages. Nothing they did. We just made it hard on ourselves to stay in the game, blown assignments, so thats where we are right now. We're not close. Some of the mistakes we make, they are uncalled for.

There is a team captain essentially echoing Bill Calahan's dumbest team in America remark five years later. He kept repeating the blown assignments. That is a comlpete lack of discipline and desire. Former Special Teams captain Jarrod Cooper said after the game that the team lacked leadership and urgency.

This team has all the hallmarks of a team that has packed it in for the season. There is no leadership. The team leader is publicly wondering how many people care, and that the team is shooting itself in the foot. They are getting blown out by teams that they should at least be competitive with. The worst thing is that there is no progression. It seems to mirror 2005, the second year under Norv Turner where the Raiders pulled off an upset win against the Washington Redskins and looked to be turning things around, only to dive down the tubes. This team is now diving down the tubes. Its going to be an ugly last few games. Hopefully over the offseason all the quitters will be weeded out, and there will be some real Raiders in their place.