Mark Davis Must Send Message to Oakland Raiders by Firing Dennis Allen

Patience may be a virtue, but only when there is some type of reward or lesson learned. When there is overwhelming evidence there is never going to be a payoff, then only a fool would continue to be patient.

That’s why the time has come for Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis to fire head coach Dennis Allen. There’s nothing left to gain by being patient, and there’s nothing to lose by firing Allen after a 38-14 thrashing in London at the hands of the Miami Dolphins.

While the benefit in the short term may be small, firing Allen sends a message to everyone in the organization that the Raiders will not tolerate poor performances. That the Raiders will especially not tolerate 0-4 starts when three games weren't even competitive.

There was a time to be patient with Allen, but that time has passed. Allen got a pass when the Raiders were rebuilding the roster from scratch and had very little talent for two seasons. Even then, there was evidence that he might not be the right man to lead the Raiders back to respectability.

The Raiders finished the 2013 season by losing the final six games by an average of more than 13 points. They won just four games, but the only road win was over the 2-14 Houston Texans. One of the four wins also came off the bye week, so Allen’s staff had an extra week to prepare and his team had fresh legs.

Year	Game	Score	Opponent	Opponent Record	Notes
2012	3	34-31	Pittsburgh Steelers	8-8
2012	6	26-23	Jacksonville Jaguars	2-14
2012	7	26-13	@ Kansas City Chiefs	2-14	Chiefs earned the No. 1 pick in 2013 Draft
2012	14	15-0	Kansas City Chiefs	2-14	Chiefs earned the No. 1 pick in 2013 Draft
2013	2	19-9	Jacksonville Jaguars	4-12
2013	7	27-17	San Diego Chargers	9-7	Chargers won 5 of final 6 games
2013	9	21-18	Pittsburgh Steelers	8-8	Raiders had bye week to prepare.
2013	10	28-23	Houston Texans	2-14	Texans earned the No. 1 pick in 2014 Draft

Even with scant talent, the Raiders should have been getting more comfortable in Allen’s schemes on both offense and defense toward the end of last season. Instead, opponents seemed to be the ones figuring things out—a sign that the talent wasn't the only thing holding the team back.

Overall, the Raiders are 8-28 under Allen’s leadership. Half of Allen’s eight wins as head coach have come against 2-14 teams and a fifth win came against a team that was 4-12. Only one win came against a team that finished with a winning record.

Maybe it’s unfair to judge Allen on the body of his work since general manager Reggie McKenzie hasn’t given him much talent to work with, but that was supposed to change in 2014. This was the year that the Raiders should have at least been competitive.

McKenzie rebuilt the offensive line, defensive line and secondary with veterans using a record amount of salary-cap space and seemingly had a nice draft. The idea was to add proven players with some tread left on their tires and an influx of talented young players to give Allen a fighting chance.

In four games this season, the Raiders have scored 51 points and been outscored by their opponents by 52 points (103 points allowed). That’s an average margin of defeat of 13 points per game this season and nearly identical to the final six games of 2013 when opponents outscored the Raiders by an average of 13.2 points. It’s also worse than the 2006 Raiders that lost their final nine games by a margin of 12 points per game under the leadership of Art Shell.

Data via Pro-Football-Reference.com

In the 12 years since the Raiders last had a winning record, this is the lowest point. That’s saying something when over the same period the Raiders had players revolting on Bill Callahan, two years of Norv Turner and a 2-14 season with a bed-and-breakfast offense. It’s also worse than drafting JaMarcus Russell, Lane Kiffin and Al Davis passive-aggressively feuding and mortgaging the future for two 8-8 seasons under Tom Cable and Hue Jackson.

The front office certainly shares some of the blame for the team’s poor performance in 2014, but it’s hard to know for sure when the talent changes and the results stay the same.  Look no further than the change at the quarterback position where the Raiders have been just as bad with Carson Palmer, Terrelle Pryor, Matt Flynn, Matt McGloin and now Derek Carr under center.  

With Carr suffering a high ankle sprain and a sprained MCL against the Dolphins, per Scott Bair of CSN Bay Area, the regime could be going on its sixth starting quarterback in less than three seasons if Matt Schaub gets the start after the bye week.  Given all the change and the importance of the position, it’s inexplicable that Allen would put Carr at risk of a more serious injury by failing to call a timeout when he was clearly hurt after a scramble in the third quarter.

Carr had to hop to the sideline on one leg before the training staff decided to attend to him. Allen should have called the timeout and run on the field himself to help Carr if the training staff was too incompetent to do the job. The fact that no one on the entire team felt the need to help Carr off the field probably says something about the culture Allen created in the locker room.

It was an inexcusable mistake on a day of inexcusable mistakes in the midst of three seasons of inexcusable mistakes. A 15-yard gain down 31-7 meant exponentially less than the health of the player the team hopes is a franchise quarterback.

That’s before even mentioning the Raiders were trying to cover three wide receivers with one defensive back against the Dolphins. That’s before getting to the fact that there have been running lanes the size of double-decker buses on defense all season. That’s before realizing the offense can’t even average 3.0 yards per carry on the ground and receivers are dropping passes and running the wrong way.

Mark Davis needs to send the message that this level of incompetence will not come to define a once-proud organization. If the team continues to falter without Allen, Davis will know that his hand-picked general manager may share some of the blame. If the team improves—even slightly—Davis will know the coaches and players got his message.

“We got a week off to evaluate everything that we're doing and see what we need to do moving forward to get better,”  Allen said after the game, via Bair.

If Allen hasn’t figured it out by now, he probably never will. The players have changed, other coaches have changed, the quarterbacks have changed and the only constants are Allen and the front office. It was time for someone else to do the evaluating.

According to Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News, Davis agreed that the bye week was a good time to re-evaluate things. No matter how Davis chooses to slice it, Allen’s job performance is easy to evaluate.