Its Time For Al Davis to Draw The Line, Both Of Them.

There comes a time when the owner has to look at his team and say enough is enough. He needs to take a look at what is going wrong and draw the line, the offensive line.

I'll put a lot of the blame on Russell's struggles as well as our runnning games struggles on the O line. It was rare to find the Raiders offense in a 2nd and 5 or less situation, the Raiders struggled in running the ball on first down.

Perhaps part of that is Tom Cable's mismanagement of the "three headed monster" or perhaps we finally saw the impact of Cable not being the offensive line coach. As the head coach he spent little time with the line, and more time trying to figure out their offensive play book from Madden 1970.

If we can focus on our offensive line in the offseason it will make life easier for any QB. Jamarcus Russell has been blamed for a lot this season, but in all reality, if he had a better line, he would have done much better. Last season he finished the season very strong, and most of that was because the offensive line was playing its best football.

Yes Russell made mistakes, but Cable should have benched him sooner if he saw Russell wasn't learning or working as hard as he should of. In all fairness to Russell, once he was benched he should have never had to come back in any game, but because the Raiders had a problem keeping our back up QB's upright and healthy he was forced to get back in there, half way through games.

Bruce Gradkowski and Charlie Frye took a lot of punishment from defenses, which is why Gradkowski was out for the season, and why Frye never finished a game he started. J.P Losman who was added very late in the season got to play a snap vs Denver and got body slammed by a defender.

Perhaps Russell's play would have been better with a better O line, if he wasn't better he would have been benched anyways. A better offensive line would have kept him benched, and out two back ups healthy.