Kiffin, Hope For Raiders Both Gone

About a year and a half after his hiring, the Oakland Raiders have fired Lane Kiffin. And all I'm left saying is why?

Kiffin inherited the worst team in the NFL. To kick off his tenure in Oakland, their number one draft pick, Jamarcus Russell, held out for about half of the season. The Raiders won two games in the season before Kiffin was hired, and won four in his first year. Um...unless I'm mistaken, four is more than two. Kiffin had the Raiders on the right track. Yeah, he's a young coach, but the Raiders are a young team, and I think both the team and Coach Kiffin were growing together.

If Al Davis thinks that the Raiders are going to find a coach that will bring the young Raiders a trip to the playoffs immediately, he's going to have to look pretty hard. In my opinion, Kiffin wasn't doing a horrible job, and I saw Oakland winning five or maybe six games this season.. Drafting Darren McFadden has this team looking pretty good down the road, with another top draft pick coming in the 2009 draft as well.

Davis has a history of hiring young coaches who have panned out well. Look at John Madden, Mike Shanahan, and Jon Gruden. These coaches have all won Super Bowl titles. Why fire a coach who could potentially have the same success as Davis' past-hires?

In Kiffin's last game with Oakland, they held a 15-point lead on the Chargers. In the end, the Chargers (obviously the better team) got the win, but for the Raiders to hang in there with one of the better teams in the NFL should translate to Kiffin keeping his job, at least for a couple more weeks.

It seems like Davis had counted his Raiders out for the season before it even started. Last January, he drafted a letter of resignation for Kiffin which he refused to sign. Maybe Davis just disliked Kiffin, or maybe it was a money issue, but either way, I was pretty confident that Kiffin would lift Oakland out of last place in the AFC West this year.

Now the Raiders have no choice but to start from square one again. For the rest of the year, we should see McFadden and Russell gain more experience, and maybe win four or five games. 

As for Kiffin, his brief tenure in Oakland will probably give him a very slim chance to ever coach in the NFL again. He's been an assistant coach at both Fresno State and USC, and seeing him resurface in college football is a good possibility.

Kiffin was the fourth coach since Jon Gruden left six years ago, and the Raiders haven't made the playoffs since their Super Bowl loss in 2002. 

In my opinion, this decision by Davis was premature, and the Raiders will be regretting this in a few weeks, and maybe a few years down the road.