SB Nation User Blog: RaiderPete

Look what has become of a once proud franchise...

RaiderPete — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:46:44 -0000

Meanwhile, in the Eagles clubhouse after Brian Dawkins left:

TRENT COLE: Something is wrong. I feel... leaderless.

MIKE PATTERSON: Me too. I feel unmotivated. Rudderless. Empty. Someone should call a meeting to talk about it.

CHRIS GOCONG: But who? Only leaders can call meetings. We have no leaders. No leaders whatsoever!

ASANTE SAMUEL: You are right. I am just a Pro Bowl caliber player who spent years playing for the most successful franchise of recent history. I cannot possibly fill the void.

SHELDON BROWN: Nor can I, a veteran who has been with the team for years.

DONOVAN McNABB: Everyone knows I can't do it, because I am weak, selfish, lazy, temperamental, incompetent, and secretly evil.

TRENT COLE: Guys, I forget ... I forget how to put on a helmet. Is this strap thing a chin strap or a scrotum strap?

CHRIS GOCONG: Who will bang his fist on the ground and make crazy gestures when his name is announced? Without those gestures, we cannot possibly win.

SHELDON BROWN: I ... I can try. When they call my name, I will smile and blow kisses to everyone, wave my hand gently. That will work right? Please, tell me that will work.

MIKE PATTERSON: My God, why won't anyone call a meeting?

ASANTE SAMUEL: Woe unto us. Our only hope was to keep playing an aging safety whose skills have been in decline for years, a guy we had to hide in coverage. He may have been a step too slow. We may have had to keep Quentin Demps in deep coverage to protect him, but Dawkins' leadership was the only thing that kept this defense together!

CHRIS GOCONG: Guys, how do we get out of the clubhouse? Dawkins always led the way. Without him, we may never figure out how to leave this room!

MIKE PATTERSON: I'll never see daylight again. I'll never see daylight again.

SHELDON BROWN: That wooden thing, with the knob and the hinges. I think it holds the secret to our escape. Trent, try to do something to it.

TRENT COLE: I cannot. I am not driven enough, not intense enough.

BRIAN WESTBROOK: C'mon guys, aren't we getting carried away? Brian was a great player, but he was well past his prime. He was turning into a role player, and he probably only has one year left as a starter. Yes, his leadership meant a lot to all of us. But we are all professionals, and there are plenty of veterans on this roster who know how to win. There's me, Sheldon, Asante. Mike, you and Trent are young veterans now, and you can do your part to keep everyone focused and ready to play. Even Donovan might conceivably play a leadership role, as insane as that sounds. So let's wish Brian well and get on with our lives. What do you say? Guys? Guys?

TRENT COLE: I think I am going to go wedge my head behind the toilet and sob.

MIKE PATTERSON: Me too

CHRIS GOCONG: Make room!

BRIAN WESTBROOK: Sigh.

Shamelessly stolen from Mike Tanier, it's about half way through the article. Fear not, the Broncos will have meetings a plenty.

Fixing the Raiders - Part 2, The Draft

RaiderPete — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:47:12 -0000

So if we continue off of this from part 1, we have a GM in place with the authority to captain his own ship. The GM list I had was not comprehensive, but it certainly had a player personnel/scouting theme. This is because of where you need to succeed to be competitive in the NFL, and where by and large the Raiders have failed. The draft.

Free agency as an avenue to build a team is the poorest choice a leam has available to them. At best a player is in his 5th year, which is about the prime of most careers. What do you have the player do with the prime of their career? Learn a new system of course. Most likely though you’re getting a player who has been in the league longer than that, either coming out of the prime or already on the decline. Most teams will find themselves paying for what a player has done, not what they will do, when they make big free agent splashes. It’s an inefficient, expensive way to build an aging team.

So what about the draft? A bunch of young kids who have to learn the NFL and it’s really just a crap shoot anyways, right? Not so much. For as much attention as the Tom Brady’s of the world get, there are far more talented players that come out of the first day of the draft than the second day. Sure there are a fair amount of first day busts but it most cases you can trace a systematic flaw in a team’s drafting strategy.

Look around the league at the great teams of the recent past. The Colts have been built nearly completely through the draft. Indy has bled talent over the years, losing Edge and Rhodes, their starting corners from their super bowl years, Mike Peterson and Cato June, Jake Scott and Tarik Glenn (all of whom they originally drafted too). They’ve been able to deal with these losses through several years of really smart drafting, they’re almost like a shark replacing one row of teeth with another each year. Other teams that have built themselves this way are the Chargers, Jaguars, Steelers, Eagles, Cowboys, and Packers. Good GMs are able to consistently get good players out of the draft.

Through the draft you’re able to get cheap (unless you’re in the top ten) productive players whose best years are ahead of them instead of expensive, aging players on the decline. Compare Zach Miller’s production at 4 years, 1.75 million to Alge Crumpler’s production at 2 years 5.25 million. Darrell Jackson will make nearly as much in one year as Brandon Marshall will in 4. Thomas Jones will make 7 times as much as Maurice Jones Drew over the course of their contracts.

The key here is not just keeping draft picks on your roster (although the cheap depth is one of the most appealing parts of the draft), but finding starters through the draft. This is where the Raiders have been bitten. Kwame Harris, Hall, Griffith, Edwards, Walker,Wilson, Lelie, Wakefield, and Burgess are each starters from a different team. This isn’t as bad as it was in years past, most of these are actually bargain players who shouldn’t be starting but would provide nice depth, and then there is Burgess who’s awesome. But we don’t have to go too far back to find the Sapps, Culpeppers and Rhodes and see what big money free agents get you.

The Raiders problems in the draft are two fold. The first is Al’s over reliance on S-E-C speeeeeeeed!!! Actually that’s only half true. Al is certainly a fan of the 40 time, but he’s no fan of the major BCS conferences. Here are the schools that this years draft class came out of: Arkansas, Connecticut, Richmond, Buffalo, and San Diego State. Last year was better (and not surprisingly one of the better draft classes) but he still went to the dregs of college football, drafting players out of UTEP, Cincinnati, WSU, Arkansas State and Louisiana Tech. 2006 included UTEP, Weber State, Cornell, and Maine.

Now, it’s certainly possible to get good players out of small schools. Michael Roos is a hell of a tackle for the Titans and he’s out of Eastern Washington. I live in Washington and didn’t know they had a football program until he was drafted. But is it likely? Absolutely not. 99.9% of the players that end up at San Diego State are there for a reason, they’re not as talented. The average SEC player is far and away better than your average UTEP player. The team has consistently tried to hit a home run in the later rounds of the draft and not surprisingly has consistently struck out. The draft strategy on day two needs to be consistency and depth, not speed and… well….. more speed.

Part 3 will be a continuation of the draft theme a bit, we'll talk about building depth and how it can relate to the Raiders 4th quarter woes.

Fixing The Raiders - Part 1, The GM

RaiderPete — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 01:18:39 -0000

So I’ve been screaming from the roof tops under just about every post about how bad Al Davis is for the Raiders. I figured that if I’m going to tell everyone there is a problem I should try to offer up a solution too. You may think that this stuff won’t change anything, but that’s not entirely true. If fans start talking enough then local media starts picking it up (usually sports radio is the first). As the clamor grows the support grows, and while Al will certainly neither see or care about this particular post, it’s not outlandish to think that down the road he may hear a similar message.

The first step to fixing the Raiders problems is building a front office. I don’t know the inner workings Al’s administration, but from everything I’ve gleamed it’s a fairly small outfit. That’s one of the many outdated strategies Al uses. When you look around the league most teams front offices are really robust, usually consisting of two divisions. The first is the business side, they handle the cap, salary negotiations, and the day to day workings that any major business sees to. The second is of course player personel, the side that Oakland appears to be lacking more so than the business side. As far as I can tell the player personel department starts and ends with Al, with a sprinkling of cronies in the middle.

But of course the biggest part of any front office is the GM. As I’ve said around here ad nauseum, the last time we were succesful was the last time Al let someone else make the decisions. Unfortunately for me I know quite a bit about poor GM performance and GM searches, between the Mariners and the Raiders I’ve had my fill (I may bleed silver and black but good god do I hate the A’s). In my opinion the Raiders really need to find someone that understands scouting and building through the draft (this will be part 2, unless I’m flamed to hell, and even then I still might). Using this criteria these are the candidates I’d love to see Al go after: (First 3 provided by Adam Schefter)

Ruston Webster, Seahawks’ VP/Player personnel — Has a great job with a great salary in Seattle, so might not be easy to hire.

- The Hawks have had good success in the draft and have won their division 4 straight years. This former lowly AFC West division rival has turned into something of a model franchise, but on the field and from a business perspective.

Gene Smith, Jaguars’ executive director of college and pro scouting — Viewed as the heir apparent in Jacksonville.

- Jacksonville has been a very talented team for longer than people realize, and even when they’ve been great they’ve been overshadowed by the Colts. He’s being groomed to be a GM and has his backround completely in player personel.

Tom Heckert, Eagles’ general manager — Has come close to leaving Philadelphia before and could be persuaded again.

- Probably not incrediably realistic, but if theres even a chance you take a look.

Brian Gaine, Dolphins assitant director of player personel – Has touched Bill Parcels.

This is not a comprehensive list by any means. I'd fully encourage pillaging the Seahawks, Eagles, Colts, Steelers, Jaguars, Packers, or anyone touched by Bill Parcels. Of course it's all moot however if Al can't keep his hands out of the cookie jar.

For better or worse, Al is the Raiders. Our team has a personality and a legacy that no other team can match. Sadly we've clung to the idea of the Raiders far longer than the results on the field have told us to. We've done it out of fear that if Al goes, if the Raiders change, the things that we loved will go away. But the fact of the matter is that no one can take Kenny Stabler, Fred Biletnikoff, Art Shell, Tim Brown, Willie Brown, Howie Long, or even Al Davis away.

Al should, and always will be the face of the Raiders. The crazy menacing old Al and the slick crafty young Al weave one of the most interesting tapestries of pro sports. But it's time. It's time for Al to hand over the day to day workings of the team. It's time to let someone else sign the players and hire the coaches. It's time for Al to sit back and enjoy his team. And it's time for us to have a team worthy of Raider fans.

www.footballoutsiders.com

RaiderPete — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:47:08 -0000

Ok, so I've never done a fanpost, and if you'd asked me 10 minutes ago I would have said I never would. I'm just happier in the peanut gallery, but after a discussion with some Bronco fans over on their site I felt it was time to bring some more attention to www.footballoutsiders.com.

You might already be familiar with them, they have a post on espn.com from time to time,they release a book every year called Pro Football Prospectus (they work closely with the pro baseball prospectus people that you may or may not be aware of), and I've mentioned them here before. I think they explain themselves best, so I'll borrow their words:

Imagine two running backs who each gain three yards. Player A gains three yards under a set of circumstances where the average NFL running back gains only two yards (for example, third-and-1), it can be argued that Player A has a certain amount of value above others at his position. Likewise, if Player B gains three yards on a play where, under similar circumstances, an average NFL back would be expected to gain five yards (for example, second-and-15), it can be argued that Player B has negative value relative to others at his position.

I'll use the example of tackles. A common way to determine how good a linebacker is is by using how many tackles he gets in a year. That is a terrible way to look at things. A tackle 2 yards behind the line of scrimmage is worth light years more than a tackle 5 yards down field. But a tackle 5 yards down field on 3rd and 6 is worth light years more than a tackle 6 yards down field on 3rd and 6. Traditional stats tell you very little about actual success, a yard is not a yard is not a yard.

What football outsiders has done is pretty amazing. They've gone back to 1995 and entered every play, offense, defense and special teams, into a database and applied their success rates accordingly. Eventually what they spit out is a couple different stats, the big ones are DVOA and DYAR (recently changed from DPAR).

You'll have to visit the site and learn about them for yourselves, they're not simple things to explain. But, if you don't care or want to know a single thing about them outside of how to read them I can help. 0% is average. Anything above 0% is good for offense, bad for defense. Anything below 0% is good for defense, bad for offense. A little strange, but it makes sense if you think about it. Everything is measured in success points, negative success points means the offense went backwards (or didn't achieve what it should), which is a win for a defense. Whats good for one is bad for the other. So when you see the Patriots D ranked first with a DVOA of a large negative number it's not a typo.

Football will never be boiled down into pure stats the way baseball has, there are far too many variables. However footballoutsiders has the best stats to use for intelligent football discussions. And, beyond the stats, they have a lot of great articles, everything from breaking down teams and games to the latest waiver wire news and what not. I love the site and encourage you all to check it out.