Al's Angst: Al Davis Wonders What's Next?

"The Autumn wind is a pirate
Blustering in from sea
With a rollicking song he sweeps along
Swaggering boisterously

His face is weather beaten
He wears a hooded sash

With his silver hat about his head
And a bristly black moustache

He growls as he storms the country
A villain big and bold

And the trees all shake and quiver and quake
As he robs them of their gold

The Autumn wind is a Raider
Pillaging just for fun

He'll knock you 'round and upside down
And laugh when he's conquered and won"

Is Al Davis feeling a winter wind whisking around sunny California?

Is Al's Autumn Wind no longer a pirate but a laughing, dancing demon inspiring doubt?

Doubt something Al Davis never felt, or at least never showed, when questioned about his football making decisions.

Does Davis, the Great Raider, feel something has gone horribly wrong with his beloved team and maybe with himself?

Does Davis feel time has treated him like fool like Warren Zevon said it does everyone eventually?

Is Al Davis painfully pondering his future and his storied past like a silver and black swathed, sad eyed King Lear?

Al Davis is a true legend of the game. He is also almost eighty an age when everyone but Caesar like Joe Paterno has left day to day football operations.

Well Ralph Wilson did keep Marv Levy around into his eighties as Buffalo Bill's general manager but many think that was mostly to have someone to discuss the sounds of 1940's swing with.

The haunting sounds of doomed Glenn Miller were known to echo from the war room in Buffalo as Wilson and Levy snapped their fingers and discussed running backs as old as their great grand kids.

But Al Davis was always on the cutting edge of the NFL.

The tip of the spear.

The swashbuckling innovator from the wild AFL.

The Rebel with a cause.

Not afraid of the powerful NFL or Commissioner Pete Rozelle.

Willing to do battle on the field or in the court room.

Just Win, Baby.

Throw deep early and throw deep often. Roll dem bones as the ruthless Raiders attacked, attacked, attacked on offense and defense. Always attack.

Bring in the misfits, the rebels, the party monster men, and the reckless.

Give me the mad, the bad, the dangerous to know as long as they bring it on Sundays seemed to be the motto of the rollicking raiders of yore.

The Raiders roared through the 60's, 70's and 80's. 

Wild reckless teams battling the Pittsburgh Steelers, Miami Dolphins, and Denver Broncos in violent AFC Championship clashes in the super seventies.

But the questionable free agent spending frenzy of 2008 coupled with the Raiders disastrous decline since their 2002 Super Bowl debacle begs the dreaded question.

Has Al finally lost his Mojo?

Did the countless court battles, coaching changes, and free agent flops finally finish him?

Is it just age?

Do all those Rich Gannon interceptions against a Jon Gruden coached team take something from the Raider soul?

Did Jon Gruden steal Al's Mojo?

Can John Madden or Howie Long get it back from the Buccaneer?

Is being a Buccaneer as bad as a being Raider? In pirate banter?

If Ben Davidson, Snake Stabler, Fossil Blanda, Otto, Tatum, Biletnikoff, Willie Brown, and the Stork set sail singing "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest. Drink and the Devil had done for the rest"' on a rum soaked galleon from riotous Oakland, round the stormy seas of cold Cape Horn and then raided Raymond James stadium could they rescue Al Davis's lost Mojo from the bad Buccanneer's Jon Gruden?

Are the old men able?

Or would the Selmon Brothers and the sea roaming shade of John McKay beat them back for the bold Buccaneers?

Al Davis's wild reckless Raider streak is good for the staid NFL.

Al Davis invented us much of what we see in the NFL game today. He is legend.

I liked to see the old Pirate win one more before he shuffles off to Davey Jones locker.

So mehopes Al Davis gets his Mojo back.

If Gruden has it he should give it back.

The young Raiders should rally and win one last one for their cagey corsair.

Go out in glory.

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.- Mark Twain on the Oakland Raiders.