Oakland Raiders: A team in crisis

Tom Flores and Rob Ryan chat. Photo by Rob Calonge/TFDSsports.com

Unfortunately for the Raider Nation, the team's 41-14 shellacking by the Denver Broncos was not the worst thing to happen to the Oakland Raiders this week. Former Raider Warren Sapp spoke his mind about his former team in a truthful, yet unflattering way and Head Cocah Lane Kiffin spoke openly with the Bay Area media and painted a very ugly picture of the happenings in Alameda.

Warren Sapp had already this past offseason called the Oakland Raiders organization a "Black Hole" and said that there were "Things that happened there that should not happen in a football organization." This last time, Sapp upped the ante by saying, "They're going to suck." He added:

“As far as where the Raiders are going, they have unrealistic ideas about what their people can do,” Sapp said on a conference call to promote the reincarnation of “Inside the NFL” that premieres tonight on Showtime.

“That was the experience I had in the four years I was there. They asked people to do stuff they were physically impossible of doing."

Warren Sapp is a player who has been known for running his mouth, but he is knowledgeable about the game of football. In fact, the Raider Nation has complained about this very thing as they have seen players moved all over the place to try them elsewhere, and they never seem to fit in.

Not unrelated to Sapp's comments but far more troubling was a glimpse into the chaos that is the Oakland Raiders headquarters from Lane Kiffin. When he was asked about the complete meltdown by the Oakland Raiders' defense, his reply was stunning:

"I'm not really going to get into, 'If I was the defensive coordinator, what would I do?' because that doesn't really matter," Kiffin said. "I'm the head coach, I oversee everything and I control what I can control. Do I have the exact same belief we do on defense? No, but it'd be hard to have the exact same belief that we do. So, it is what it is."

The role of the head coach is to be the leader of the team. Yes, it is his job to let his coordinators do their jobs, but to hear a head coach say that he has no control over the defense is just amazing. The head coach is ultimately the person responsible for whether a team wins or loses, or in the words of Harry S. Truman, "The buck stops here." With Lane Kiffin passing the buck to his subordinate in front of the media that shows that the long-rumored dysfunction is, in fact, true.

At the crux of this situation is the non-firing of Rob Ryan last year. Lane Kiffin made a move to fire a coordinator he didn't share a system ideal with at the close of last season, just as head coaches all over the NFL do every season. Instead of letting Kiffin get his way, Al Davis un-fired Ryan and kept him around. Then the drama began with months of rumors of Al telling Lane to quit and Kiffin telling him "no, fire me." Thus, Kiffin is stuck with a defense that he is not happy with, and from the looks of things for good reason.

“We talk about it early in the week. Rob and the owner are in communication,” Kiffin said. “For the most part, I let Rob do his thing over there. He has a belief in certain things and he has a conversation with the owner about that. So that wasn’t the way the game plan ended up the other night.”

This gives truth to all the rumors that have circulated over the years about Al Davis's interference. Kiffin, who is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the team has no control over how half of it is run, and the boss supports this. That is beyond dysfunctional. With this type of incongruity, this is going to be a long season for the Raider Nation.

The upshot of all this is that Lane Kiffin will be lucky to finish the season as the head coach. He has already done what none before him have done and publicly questioned Al Davis, and that was after he was already on thin ice after the offseason. He could not deliver a win against the hated Broncos in the opener. Now, he is putting the responsibility for that loss squarely on Al Davis and Davis's guy Rob Ryan. The offseason power struggle was real and has spilled over into the regular season.

Unless there is a major turnaround by week five, expect Lane Kiffin to be replaced by Rob Ryan at that time. Things in Alameda right now are worse than the Raider Nation could have imagined. With the coaching change, don't be surprised for the Raiders to continue their slide. 2006 may not have been rock bottom.