Why Al Davis signed Routt to a 1st & a 3rd rd tender is probably the dumbest thing he's done since signing Larry "Do-Do" Brown back in '96.  The only difference Larry Brown won the SB MVP.....what has Stanford Routt done other than get burned time after time after time after time.  Even the incompletions to the WR's he covers are drops, not a pass defensed.  He's just flat out garbage.  I'd rather see Terry McDaniel play corner than Routt.  For the so called "great speed" he has, he obviously doesn't have cover skills nor will he ever develop it.  This is already his 6th year....if he hasn't got good by now, he never will.  They need to pull a "DeAngelo Hall" on him and cut him off the team immediately.

For sure the Raiders run defense the last 7 years has been pathetic at best and you would think just looking at the numbers from last week(32 rushes; 175 yds by RB's)you would think the Raiders run D hasn't improved. However, if you watched the game, for most of the 1st half the Raiders held Johnson in check. He made that big run late in the 2nd qtr. and as Steve Corkran of the Oakland Tribune pointed out: "Twenty of Johnson's 27 carries went for 4 yards or fewer. Of those 20, 10 failed to net more than 1 yard". Thats pretty good. "Those 76 yards accounted for more than half of Johnson's 142 for the game. Johnson averaged a pedestrian 2.5 yards on his 26 other carries." Johnson is a special back. He's a home run hitter. You can stop him 9 times, but that 10th rush he'll take it for 85 yards and that one run will make the defensive stats look as if they weren't stopping him when in fact they were. So take solice Raider Nation, the Raider run D is improving, it's just last week the Raiders effort were over shadowed by the stats.

This is something thats gotta be corrected immediately if we're to make a push for the playoffs.....THE O-LINE!!! It just flat out stinks. Outside of Robert Gallery, the O-line looked pathetic. Mario Henderson is starting to look like this years Kwame Harris and Langston Walker looks slower than a snail. Cable needs to bench Walker because he's simply too slow and put in Bruce Campbell. Why not see what we got. We already know what Walker can do and we're starting to see what Henderson can (or should I say CAN NOT) do. This is absolutely critical. J. Campbell didn't have anytime what so ever and whenever he did have time(which was rare), he would rush the throw. Jared Veldheer's mistakes he made I can live with for the simple fact he's a rookie out of a division 2 school. I bet he never played in anything that loud in his life, but at the sametime I put a little of the blame on Cable for starting this kids' career on the road. He should've let Satele start and then after a few games, let the kid start at home....not in Tennessee. I also think Veldheer was doing something w/ the ball that tipped off the Titans D-line. They was jumping off the ball extremely well. It looked like they knew the snap count, even when they changed the cadence. So this is something they'll have to really look at w/ this kid and make sure he's not doing something to tip them off. But the bottom line is the O-line stinks and it needs to be fixed quickly!!!

During this past years draft, I was wondering who the Raiders would draft to be their center. The centers they had before like Samson Satele, to me, looks smaller than his listed 300lbs and doesn't seem to be the physical presence you need to be to play center. The same can be said for Chris Morris who they cut. So with that said, I was looking at the center's available in the draft and the only legit one out there was Maurkice Pouncey and he was projected to go late in the 1st round(He ended up getting drafted 18th overall). So I looked at the remaining center's available and there was no centers to take in the 2nd or the 3rd round.....or was there? The Raiders ended up taking Jared Veldheer, out of the tiny school of Hillsdale, to play tackle, originally. He's 6' 8" 320lbs solid(he was 312lbs at the combine). He's very smart & extremely strong. For him to develop into a legit tackle would've taken a few seasons. Coach Cable saw his physical attributes and decided to try him at center and hey, why not? He's very smart so picking up his line-mates assignments and his shouldn't be a problem. He's extremely strong, as I mentioned before, so he won't be pushed around by these monster D-tackles like Morris and Satele have been. In fact, the pre-season game he started against the Niners, he more than held his own against 1st team guys, not 3rd or 4th string guys. Of course he has alot to learn about playing center, but it looks like he's willing to learn and really assert himself as a legit center. Do I expect him to make the pro-bowl this year? Of course not, but from what I saw from his start against the Niners its a great beginning.