Raiders Tom Cable says JaMarcus Russell still work in progress

October 19, 9:42 PMOakland Raiders ExaminerPatrick Patterson

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The Oakland Raiders offense played well enough to support the defense in the upset victory over the Philadelphia Eagles, but if the Raiders need a better output from their offense if they want to take it to the next level. JaMarcus Russell may have looked better than his numbers, but scoring only thirteen points is not going to win many games in the National Football League.

(AP PHOTO/ Jose Maurico Sanchez)

The Raiders patchwork offensive line was improved over their past performances, but they still had trouble opening the holes for the Raiders running game. Cable said of his old unit, "Uh, good. You know, the first sack we took was without question on JaMarcus. If he'd just push up. They brought an overload blitz left, we did a great job of sliding to it with both backs picking 'em up. And then he bailed out that way. Don't know why.. The next one, simply was just getting mismatched at right tackle. So those you gotta live with. Those are gonna happen. Pressure-wise, there were three other times in the game, so five times when he had to do something in the pocket. From a week ago, that's down about 12. So that's a good thing."

Normally, he blames Russell's struggles on the receivers, protection, or even sun spots, but here he directly called out Russell on being at fault for a sack. Apparently it is easier to call out his young signal caller following a win because he gives a much more ambiguous statement about Russell when he discussed the fourth and short incompletion to Louis Murphy. "You know it's just an underthrow. Really. We were uncovered in the flat to Gary Russell, so we should've just put the ball there and move the chains and gone on or possibly even could've kept it and ran for the touchdown. But they did come out of coverage on Louis [Murphy] and so you gotta'--like I said to JaMarcus, 'Okay, you saw it and you took the shot. Now we gotta' make that play. If we're gonna' take the shot, we gotta' make the play.' Can't, can't be down on him going for it because they came out of coverage. He was uncovered deep. Certainly could've dumped it or ran it in himself for the first down."

Despite his average numbers, Russell carried himself with more composure than normal, and was able to make more plays with his feet and hit his check-downs well enough for them to make plays with the ball. Gary Russell's five catches for 55 yards including his 12 yard catch for a first down at the two minute warning to clinch the game were examples of this. However, Russell still had problems connecting with his wide outs with Johnnie Lee Higgins and Todd Watkins combining for two catches for six years, and those were the only catches by wide outs.

When asked how good Russell could be, Cable gave this overwhelmingly honest answer, "Where he is, where he goes with it will, ultimately, be up to him. How good he wants to be, how much he's willing to, ultimately, put into it to get what he should get out of it. He's just like everyone else on this football team, particularly on offense. They got to take the thought that yesterday was nice, it feels good to wake up today, but we need to get better."

Notice that Cable doesn't say that he is destined to be among the great ones, in fact, reading between the lines it sounds like Cable has questions about how hard Russell wants to work and how good Russell wants to be.

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You can also find Patrick Patterson on Thoughts from the Dark Side.