Oakland Raiders: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, and The Stripes

Ugh.

If I had paid $600 dollars for a flight, $76 dollars for a hotel room and then another $80 for the ticket...I'd want my money back.

The Raiders, who were 1-1 going into this game, discovered there are a lot of problems to fix.

Some things were out of our control, obviously. You can't replace Robert Gallery and expect his replacement to be as good.

But for the Raiders and the Nation, not a lot could be good about today's game.

For the Good, you could look at Oakland's Defense on a number of stops, including an opening drive for the Broncos that died on a fourth-and-goal.

Also, Denver could only score two touchdowns, holding Denver to field goals on other drives. Twenty-three points was at least within a ballpark...losing by 41 would have been much more painful.

Also for the good side, Oakland's running game, when it was used, did have some nice numbers. McFadden and Bush both combined for 65 yards, however it was obvious that Cable didn't want the run to win this game, he was looking for passing.

The last good point to make, was related to Sebastian Janikowski, who thankfully hit a 48 yard field goal. Without this, Oakland would have been shut out.

The bad side of things, as you can imagine, wasn't hard to find. Bad passing, bad ball control, and bad play calling.

JaMarcus Russell, is easily in this field, with two interceptions in short order. One was shortly after the Raiders had stopped Denver on a goal-line stand and then with a tired defense, was turned into a touchdown. The second INT, became a 10-0 lead.

Darren McFadden, while partially responsible for not hanging onto the ball securely, wasn't nearly as effective as hoped. It might be due to Robert Gallery being out, or due to Denver's effort to stack the box. Whatever the reason may be, McFadden wasn't given time to perform properly.

The mismatches, primarily created by Denver to exploit Oakland's man-to-man coverage, helped Denver march often and easily, but also made the Raiders prone to giving up large pieces of yardage. As stated before, this game could have been much worse. But for it's action, the defense—with a few tweaks—could carry the team.

The ugly aspects, are what makes me worried about the Raiders, in general.

For this, JaMarcus Russell falls into the bad and ugly category. Twelve for 21, his passing numbers were up, but for only 61 yards. On his two interceptions, both were attempts to Darrius Heyward-Bey. One the first one, Darrius looked like he was falling down, and on the second one, the ball simply overflew the receiver and the covering player, turned into a receiver.

Tom Cable, as well gets a nod on this. Early in the game, a drive would start up and the Raiders could convert first downs. For some reason then, Cable would switch to passing the ball, with predictable results. If you know what your teams' strengths are, use them, don't use the game as a practice session.

I don't know what sort of practice sessions they have with the Darrius Heyward-Bey...but after today's action, I hope they lock this guy in a room with Tim Brown.

Lastly for Ugly, comes the offensive line. These guys need to find some way to find some unity, giving up three sacks was unacceptable—as were the penalties. At the same time, this leads to the last phase: the stripes.

Is it a bad sign, when the announcer for CBS reports that, "this is the first game for Ed Hochuli since last year's week two game?" We all remember Ed as the reason why Denver won the "fumble game" against the Chargers, for his blowing of a whistle, then seeing Denver keep the ball, scoring a touchdown and inflating Mike Shanahan's head.

On this afternoon, Ed would have a field day, for different reasons. For one, was a called fumble by Darren McFadden, who when down, lost the ball, had it roll out of bounds and then get picked up by Brian Dawkins. What was also interesting, was that Brian went out of bounds and then back in, to recover the ball.

According to Ed, this is legal. It doesn't matter that McFadden was down, or that the ball was wobbling out of bounds...Denver would get the ball.

Also on Ed's to-miss list, was a pushoff by Brandon Marshall. It wouldn't normally irritate me, but considering he had flagged Chris Johnson for a pass interference call, it was pretty easy to draw your own conclusions on how the stripes would call things.

Missed holding, illegal blocks to the back, a can of pencils for Ed would be in order.

For Oakland, I hope they learn a few things from this mess. JaMarcus Russell has to fix himself...or find himself another team to play for.

They need to find some offense to go along with this defense.

Or we're going to be seeing more of these games.