Football Is Nearly Upon Us: Raiders Training Camp Intrigue

(By Joe Kukura)

Life becomes worth living again, as NFL teams have opened their training camps league-wide. We’ll be contemplating these nascent Oakland Raiders today, and the similarly-underdog 49ers tomorrow. The two teams will play to open their preseason Friday at 7 p.m. at McAfee Coliseum.

As Lord Voldemort assembles his charges in Napa to train for the 2008 campaign, he sees among them a highly hyped rookie, and a coach unlikely to survive the season. That's the Raider Football formula. Overmatched man-child coach Lane Kiffin has been needled, undermined, and emasculated by so many head games from upper management that he may soon be reduced to chasing recycling bin scavengers yelling “Stay where you are! You’re in big trouble!”

But there's hope this year for Raider Nation, embodied by the electrifying rookie Darren McFadden. Jesus, look at him menace in that Raider uniform! He has none of that defeated-looking body language we've seen from so many Raiders in recent years... and maybe he never will. He'll begin by backing up the huggy Justin Fargas, but they can still use him in a Reggie Bush, wild-card capacity. They can throw to him on play-action, they can use his as a dump-off option on screens, they can have him drive monster trucks in demolition derbies at halftime. He's even got an awesomely juvenile, obviously not ghost-written blog.