5 Questions With Just Blog Baby’s Chase Ruttig
By Ben Nielsen
Oct 13, 2013; Kansas City, MO, USA; Kansas City Chiefs defensive back Husain Abdullah (39) returns an interception for a touchdown against the Oakland Raiders during the second half at Arrowhead Stadium. The Chiefs won 24-7. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports
3. How did Oakland get to this point? What is the solution for the Raiders to get back to being a competitive football team?
Rebuilding sucks, and rebuilding when your team’s key players go down for the season is even worse on a football team. Nick Roach’s concussion problems forced Miles Burris into playing every snap at MLB, losing a safety like Tyvon Branch plus his backup in Usama Young has hurt the secondary, losing Rod Streater for much of the season has been awful for the wideout position and those are just the longterm injuries. In the NFL you are only as good as your depth and this Oakland team that is rebuilding does not have close to the deep roster needed to compete with an extremely difficult schedule playing AFC West, NFC West, and AFC East teams this season.
The solution for the Raiders is a boring one because it is pretty simple: draft well. High end free agents won’t come to Oakland unless there is an overpay involved (this team tried in vain to bring in Desean Jackson, who made a pretty dumb choice to go to Washington in retrospect) and even with plenty of cap space they can’t afford to put themselves back in a salary cap mess that got them into a rebuilding situation in the first place. This team has done relatively well adding talent through the draft, but with the impatience of NFL fans that gets ignored as this team continues to lose.