Oakland's Smoking Gun: Al Davis Sticks It to His Critics

(Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

Like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, Al Davis is starting to take on the image of a man who will live forever.

Saturday, amist a wrath of recent criticism, Al Davis came out of hiding and spoke publicly for the first time since February. It's safe to say that he had a lot on his mind.

One of the first things Mr. Davis said was, "I want to state this from the very beginning, and let him tell you, let Coach Cable tell you, there was never—and I can give you a little idea of the trade, but that we won’t do right now—but it was never any doubt that Richard wanted to play for the Raiders."

Ok, that was media stick No. 1. He might as well have said, "Haha, you people got it wrong about my team again."

He continued on to give the media the real reason for Richard Seymour's long absence from the team, "He liked the idea of the Raiders, and coach Cable got that from him very quickly on the telephone, that he liked the idea of the Raiders. He just wanted to get over the shock, and the blindside if that’s the right word, he had, based on them calling and telling him he’d been traded, but this is part of our lives. "

Later, one of the reporters asked No. 92, "Did you talk to Randy Moss or Derrick Burgess and were you concerned because they were here through coaching changes?"

After respectfully letting Seymour answer the question, Al chimed in, "Listen, Derrick has never been negative. Derrick wanted more money that we couldn’t give him. Randy Moss was great here for us. We couldn’t satisfy Randy, that was our fault. He’s a truly great player.

"The idea when you get a great player is to make him happy and satisfy him. But I’ll tell you this. For example, there’s one player (Rodney Harrison?) that I remember that keeps attacking us. In the year 2003, he sat in my office and begged for a contract, and wouldn’t give it to him because of rumors.

"That guy attacked us on the television shows, and it’s only because I wouldn’t give him a contract and I wouldn’t let him play here. I can go through the litany."

Al continued on to say, "We have one guy [Michael Lombardi?] on our own network that we own, the NFL Network, who’s worked for five teams in this league, he’s been fired by all five teams and he comes on as an expert and says that Richard doesn’t want to play for the Raiders, he doesn’t want to go out there.

"Which was totally untrue, because I would have backed away if he didn’t want to come out here. And I say to you, it isn’t what you think it is."

Mr Davis was truly shining on this day, he checked down to a former Oakland quarterback, while making sure to diss his favorite recent trading partner in the process, "Andrew Walter, left here, he was disappointed, he didn’t play. He played for four different coaches.

"He goes up to New England, they tell him they’re going to play him in the last preseason game for a half. He doesn’t get to play a down and they cut him the next day. So at least here he played some downs."

Davis was asked what he thought about the grievance filed on behalf of Seymour by the NFLPA, he said, "I thought that was minimal, it was nothing. I’m sure that they won’t even go through with it. They had nothing. They just wanted to let you know that the Players Association is still available. Whatever we did, we were entitled to do."

He turned out to be correct, they dropped the suit soon after Seymour arrived in Oakland. He added, "They can’t do anything. I don’t even know what your question is other than they filed a grievance. Anybody can file anything. That grievance meant nothing. The rules state that I could do it. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise."

Mr. Davis was a smoking gun. He was firing on all cylinders Saturday. He proved he is still very sharp, and made Raider Nation proud to be a part of the franchise. He gave us hope, and lit a spark under his players and coaches.

Davis was asked about why the Raiders waited to do the trade until so late in the off-season, he was electric in his response, "Well we couldn’t do it in February and March because if we could have done it, we’d have done it...both Tom Cable and I knew that the one we wanted. You shouldn’t tell them this, it’s the guy wearing No. 92.

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?