Can the Oakland Raiders Do the Quarter Mile in Under Nine Seconds?

(This is part one of two)

For Raider Nation, the image above not only illustrates our biggest issue but also a scene that was way too common.

How can we ask JaMarcus Russell to improve his passing accuracy and completion percentage when he is not afforded the time to have the routes develop? 

Amazingly despite the obvious woes of the offensive line the rookie improved! His most important stats, turn over, completion percentage and touch down passes were all up in the last six games of the season. 

The offensive line is like the motor of a race car. With minor tweaking we were able to gain maximum benefit in the form of Mario Henderson. He was a big reason for the Raiders' back-to-back wins over quality teams.

Imagine if we were to continue that same recipe for success and make one more tweak by drafting an OT with the seventh over all pick. If adding Mario Henderson to the starting lineup yielded two wins against solid competition, how many wins could we get with another top OT?

Now getting back to the race car analogy. By drafting an elite OT with the seventh overall pick, we would be improving from a 14 second quarter-mile time to an 11 second car. Not bad with just one more tweak.

Now that we have more horsepower under the hood (McFadden, Bush, and Rankin) and a motor capable of handling the power lets address the suspension and spoiler combination as they both translate to better traction and responsiveness on the road.

Yes you guessed it; this is the responsibility of the front seven defensive players. Again, let's not make this anymore difficult than what it is. If we, in theory, apply the same logic to the defensive side of the ball that we did to the offensive side we should net similar results.

However in this case it would be considered more of a major modification than a tweak since our suspension seems better suited for your mothers Caravan.

We can address this by drafting a DT with the second round pick. I would like to point out that we have not drafted a DT or OT with any of our top draft picks (with the exception of Gallery) and believe this to be a major reason for our bottom dweller algae sucking status of the NFL.

Instead making critical errors in judgment and throwing money at free agents to address these areas. One just needs to look back at history to see just how that resulted.

So the DT addresses the major upgrade in an adequate race suspension. Now we need to adjust the angles of our front and rear spoilers by picking up a strong middle linebacker like Jasper Brinkley, 6'2", 270lbs. with a 4.72.

The Law offices of M & H are 6'2", 240lbs. and very fast. Morrison is better suited as an OL and I do think he has done an admirable job but clearly shines when in coverage like his counter part Howard. Brinkley brings stopping power with speed to run down player which can be had in the later rounds.

Now that we're at running in the low 10's, one can see that it was not to difficult getting here and that we are not really that far from taking that checkered flag!

I will discuss how to get this beast under nine seconds by addressing the later round and free agency in a part two.