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By Steven Slivka, LVSportsBiz.com Writer
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — There was a period in the mid-aughts where the Raiders were downright awful.
The general understanding was that the team would never fully improve until Al Davis relinquished control of his general manager duties. Everyone knew that would never happen, at least not while he was alive.
Then he died, and the hope was that Mark Davis would make the wise decision to hire a GM who could make these very important football decisions. The team would be much better for it, they said.
It’s been 15 years and the team has never looked worse. Did they win toward the end in Oakland? Seldom times, yes.
Most of the time, they lost. But at least the team was fun. It had a cultivated image. A reputation that preceded it, filled with nostalgia and a bunch of rag-tag outcasts that injected a lively personality into a not-very-good football team.
And even though the Raiders were mostly major ass during this time, you could look at the stands in that dilapidated and run-down Coliseum and feel the collective energy emanating from the crowd.
Now the team is on its fifth head coach and not even sure how many general managers in five years since it moved to Las Vegas in 2020.
There are no signs of improvement. They no longer have a fun and campy identity. You simply cannot intimidate the shit out of other teams when you’re scraping by on three to five wins a year, playing in a milquetoast, cookie-cutter dome that is half full of the opposing team’s colors — a boring ambience that the fans in Oakland would find nothing short of insulting.
This doesn’t feel anywhere close to the same team I spent my entire life rooting for. And while I don’t miss Al Davis running the team, at least he had some good years under his belt.
The Raiders are back at square one. A perpetual rebuild, it seems.
Mark Davis booted one-year-and-done head coach Pete Carroll to the curb this morning.
And at 2 PM, Raiders General Manager John Spytek met the media, acknowledging he shares some of the blame for the Raiders’ NFL-worst 3-14 record.
“I also want to make it extremely clear, too, that I bear a ton of responsibility for the outcome of the season and our record,” Spytek said.
“This isn’t on any one person, and really, I don’t want anyone to think that anyone deserves more responsibility than me and that it’s something I’m very aware of, I think about all the time, and am determined to get right,” he said. “The accountability should start and stop with me, and that needs to be said.”
Spytek and Raiders part-owner Tom Brady will work together on the coach search.
But hey, at least I don’t have to see those stupid “TIME TO COMPETE” billboards off the freeway anymore.
PSA