Raiders' Allen, McKenzie get free pass this season

This column is a plea for patience with the Oakland Raiders.

It is a plea for patience even though the Raiders lost their first two games, lost them miserably, lost to the Miami Dolphins, one of the allegedly beatable teams on their schedule. The Raiders easily could begin the season with five straight losses and could finish the season with fewer than four victories.

Please be patient.

Already some fans and sportswriters are criticizing the Raiders, just eviscerating them. Not fair. It's impossible to reach conclusions after two games, and early devastating criticism ignores the root causes of the Raiders' problems.

The Raiders have root causes.

Let's start with the easy stuff. The Raiders have a bunch of injured receivers. Their current "corps" of receivers isn't so hot and quarterback Carson Palmer hasn't had enough time with his starting receivers and that shows. Opposing defenses have no fear a vertical strike will be successful. That can kill an offense.

The Raiders' cornerbacks are barely up to the league standard. Starting cornerbacks Ron Bartell and Shawntae Spencer are injured — not that they were brilliant to begin with. On Tuesday, the Raiders held tryouts to find replacements for them. You can smell the desperation wafting over their fields in Alameda.

OK, those are two obvious examples of Raiders' problems, but there are more, and now you'll have to use your noodle.

Rookie general manager Reggie McKenzie and rookie head coach Dennis Allen inherited a so-so roster tutored in bad offensive and defensive philosophies. This was a real head scratcher for them and it puts them in a no-win situation this season, and perhaps beyond this season.

The question they face every day is this: How well do their personnel fit their new schemes? The answer they face every day is: Not so well.

This is the critical issue. Allen and offensive coordinator Greg Knapp have a certain philosophy, but the current personnel are not congruent with that philosophy. If Allen wants to appear respectable — not actually be respectable — he could alter his philosophy, dilute it for his current personnel. He might win eight games, but he would make no progress, would sell out the future for the illusion of a present.

Or he can do what he's doing. He can install new offensive and defensive ideas no matter what — as one expert told me, "Come hell or high water." Allen will look awful doing this and he will get a ton of criticism, but this is the only way to make progress.

This is the eternal dilemma for a new coach — whether to install his brand of ball even if the personnel just aren't there. And the answer is always the same — install the thing. Do not adjust your system to the players you have, players who will be gone.

So, this is an argument for you to take the long view, for not running Allen and McKenzie and Knapp out of town after two games. And it means this is a diagnostic year in which Allen discovers which players can adapt and which can't. Everyone should give the Raiders a free pass this year as long as the players play hard and don't quit — there has been no sign of quitting.

"That sounds good in the abstract," you're thinking, "but can you be specific?"

Sure. Think of the Raiders with a simple analogy, the square peg in the round-hole analogy. The Raiders have several square pegs in key positions and they will need round pegs in the future.

Who is a square peg who must go away?

Carson Palmer is a square. He is a standard, old-style pocket quarterback with limited athletic ability. But the Raiders are trying to spread out their offense, stretch the field so Darren McFadden can run to the edge or stop and cut on a dime and dash up the middle.

For that run attack to work, the Raiders need an athletic quarterback who is a threat to run, who runs bootlegs — anything to stretch the field horizontally. Think Steve Young. Carson Palmer is the wrong quarterback for this new system. If you want to push matters to their logical extreme, Terrelle Pryor is the right quarterback for what the Raiders want to do, the quarterback to complement McFadden. But no one knows if he has the passing skills.

You want more square pegs?

Tommy Kelly and Richard Seymour, two of the Raiders cornerstones on defense, are strictly square. They aren't the only squares on a bad defense — the Raiders missed five tackles on Reggie Bush's long touchdown run last Sunday, so there are plenty of squares on that defense.

These days, a defense needs good athletes who can run sideline to sideline. Kelly is adequate at clogging the middle but when it comes to lateral pursuit, he runs as fast as an Amana freezer. Watch on Sunday against the Steelers. Watch the Steelers cut off Kelly behind their wall of blockers.

Same goes for Seymour, strictly old style. If you need someone to punch Ben Roethlisberger in the nose, Seymour is your man. If you need someone to run side to side along the line of scrimmage, don't count on this old, immobile lineman. Get him a lounge chair.

The Square Peg in the Round Hole Theory is why fans should be patient with the Raiders. McKenzie and Allen are trying to find round pegs. That takes time. Chuck them a break.

For more on the world of sports in general and the Bay Area in particular, go to the Cohn Zohn at cohn.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.