Unforgiven: Oakland's bad seeds
I remember a person once making note that "once a Raider, always a Raider" in his mentioning of older players. Guys like Dave Casper, Ken Stabler and Tim Brown all left the Raiders for various reasons. But these same players came back to the fold after retiring, some making a last day gesture to return to the team.
Others, left a stink that makes the fans and team wonder what was Al thinking when we selected this or that player, either via the draft or from a trade.
First and foremost....Todd Marinovich. Seriously. We drafted him to be our quarterback of the future, the same year Brett Favre came up....of course, so did Dan McGwire, Mark's brother.
How did he perform? not exactly well, he had a close but losing game in the last game of his rookie season, then lost badly to the Chiefs in the first round of the playoffs.
His second season was a string of highlights and lowlights, with his season and career destroying themselves in short order when his playing time deteriorated.
Next up, Randy Moss. Now Moss did give us one great year, with over 1000 yards...then he started his prima donna attitude issue, that led him to be shipped out to New England. He was called a cancer by some, and suffering from dimishing skills by one coach...then put together the record season for the Patriots.
Third, is Jerry Porter. Again, here was a player who gave us some hopes for the next good WR option in Oakland....and then his brain rotted off at the stem with Moss in town. Losing him for all but one reception in 2006, he was the dead man walking for the Raiders. Of course it went both ways, Porter tried to play with the Jags for a season, was released and never played again.
Ronald Curry was another example of a WR that started strong, had some good highlights...and then became disgruntled. He was fed up with Cable's choice of players, choosing to go younger in 2008, then after the season was done he left for Detroit...only to be traded to the Rams before the season started. He never got a chance to play either and was done.
Warren Sapp, went as far as to bash the team off and on since his retirement, however some also feel this was a form of brainwashing by NFL Network, as it seems old hat to hate on the Raiders by this cast of clowns.
The list can go on....but when players act like this, you can only shake your head and say:
"Why can't every player be like Jim Otto?"
