Raiders simply leave you shaking your head

<p>OAKLAND - The pattern is so familiar. All the preseason talk from the Raiders, all the talk about how they’re improved and they have better players and they’ve come together as a team - all that baloney.</p><p>And then the Raiders start playing, playing for real and it’s the same old thing, mind-numbingly the same. The defense can’t stop the other guys - in this case it was Denver, but it could be anybody. And the Raiders make all kinds of mistakes - I was going to say stupid mistakes but that combo is kind of redundant. </p><p>I’m thinking how JaMarcus Russell tried to throw a pass and the ball slipped out of his hand, just like that, and how it looked like a prank by a circus clown.</p><p>I’m thinking how Johnny Lee Higgins muffed the ball on an end around, just dropped the sucker - more circus clowning. And how Russell got called for delay of game because he wanted to change the play at the line of scrimmage and got confused and time ran out.</p><p>I’m thinking how Denver wide receiver Eddie Royal kept faking out Raiders corner DeAngelo Hall and Hall, frustrated, fouled him twice on one drive, the second foul a spear helmet to helmet.</p><p>I’m thinking how coach Lane Kiffin should have yanked Hall from the game then and there - a team cannot allow such a blatant loss of cool. I’m thinking Kiffin didn’t take him out. What a bunch of clowns.</p><p>I’m thinking about Russell. I’m thinking in the first half Kiffin allowed him to throw exactly eight passes. Russell kept handing off the ball, just handing off. For this, the Raiders paid him millions? He looked like a turnstile at Times Square Station on the New York subway. He looked like a machine.</p><p>I’m thinking backup quarterback Andrew Walter could hand off as well as Russell and he comes cheaper. </p><p>I’m thinking Russell throws beautifully. Everything about his motion is beautiful and when he locks onto a receiver and lets the ball go, well it explodes through the air, a missile. And it is beautiful to see. He missed Ronald Curry twice in the first half with lovely spiraling long passes - one miss might have been Curry’s fault. And it’s clear the Raiders are in a bind. If they let Russell pass he will miss and he will make mistakes because he is green. You know the history. You know why he’s not ready. But if they don’t let him throw, he’ll never learn. It’s a classic bind for a bad football team. The Raiders are familiar with classic binds.</p><p>Kiffin wants to impose a personality on the team. He wants the Raiders to be a running team that passes sometimes. Passing will be the additional spice. But Denver understood that and took the runs away - took away the Raiders’ personality. I want to amend that. Denver imposed a personality on the Raiders and it’s terrible to let someone give you a personality. The personality Denver imposed on the Raiders was a running team that couldn’t run, a team that wanted to control with the run but lost control, a team that could not establish its own personality. </p><p>Raider teams are like that. The image of the Raiders is a rough tough image. And that’s fine. In football rough tough is good, virtuous even. But the Raiders aren’t really tough. They play at being tough, pretend to toughness, are toughness frauds.</p><p>The Raiders are the team that lets other teams define them and dictate their reality and push them around and impose the result. The Raiders are the team that gets booed at halftime and got booed with 8:23 left in the third quarter after the Broncos upped the score to 24-0.</p><p>The Raiders are never good enough and once you’ve acknowledged that you remember, sure, Oakland is a dysfunctional organization with so much strange stuff going on. How could they be good? How could Russell stand a chance? How can they ever win?</p><p>And after you remember all that, you just shake your head.</p><p>You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at 521-5486 or lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.</p>