American Football Spectacular: It's Likely You Won't See This But It Will Happen
The Oakland Raiders' 2006 slog of a season continues this Sunday at the Coliseum with their Week 15 scrap with the St. Louis Rams.
Plenty of tickets still available for the game. Well, there must be, since the NFL is blacking the game out on TV.
* St. Louis vs. Oakland
Sunday, December 17, 2006. 1:00 PM, PST.
Week 15
The Unseen Battle
The Rams still have a rather capable offense what with QB Mike Bulger, WR Torry "Big Game" Holt, trusty veteran WR Isaac Bruce, and the beast of a player that is RB Steven Alexander.
Of course, all the so-called "skill position" players in the world won't help when you're playing behind a dinged-up offensive line and are in the first year of using a brand new offensive system under rookie Head Coach Scott Linehan.
The Rams can be hot, the Rams can be cold -- there's no telling which team will show up on Sunday. Two weeks ago they lost to the Arizona Cardinals, one of the absolute worst teams in the league as they play out the rest of their schedule waiting to fire Head Coach Dennis Green. One week ago the Rams traded blows with the Chicago Bears' taut defense before succumbing to a couple of special teams touchdowns, and failing to adjust to how the Bears had adjusted their D to STL's strategy.
The Rams are potentially a mid-range team even as they rebuild. The remnants of a proud offense saddled with a useless defense. This week is going to be a meeting of two teams with nothing but next year to play for.
If the Raiders do beat St. Louis this Sunday, it could be considered a mistake for the franchise, and here's why:
Oakland is still in the race for that #1 overall draft pick. Both the hapless Detroit Lions and the Raiders have only two wins on the season.
Won't matter. Nothing in the Raiders' culture of misanthropy will change until The Al dies. 'Til then it's more of the same: player talent on offense misspent by an outdated gameplan mandated by Al.
It's gonna take a custom clean restart to fix what ails this team, and until then, Oakland will continue to be a undisciplined and dated laughingstock trading on the memories of a once-glorious past -- like Axl Rose.
Next up on your American Football Spectacular: Too negative? It's a shame we're not wrong. Here, we got some Raider bright spots for 2006: KR/DB Chris Carr, DT Terdell Sands, defensive coordinator Rob Ryan's aggressive coaching (and mullet), DE Derrick Burgess, Cal alum CB Nnamdi Asomugha, and the fact that we don't live in Cincinnati.