MM: McNabb a Redskin and the Raiders show never ends

Another week has come and gone. The Donovan McNabb rumors that ran hot and heavy for a couple of weeks and engulfed everything have come to naught as he was sent to Washington to become a Redskin. Meanwhile, the Raiders saga continues as the court case between Randy Hanson and Tom Cable along with the Raider organization has taken the center ring. Oh yeah, the new and improved prime time NFL draft is coming fast.

The reports were coming fast and furious that Donovan McNabb was going to be a Raider. There was speculation about the speculation of what compensation may be involved. Draft picks, Nnamdi Asomugha, at one point even Asante Samuel’s name was thrown into the mix. However, what won’t be known where these rumors came from. Well, other than Adam Schefter’s twitter feed.

Got to love DeAngelo Hall. The Raiders give up two draft picks to get him. He was handed a ridiculous contract. He was burnt to a crisp by opposing receivers and cut eight games later, with a cool eight million dollars in his pocket. Rather than being grateful to Al Davis for handing him a wad of cash, he has ripped the organization every chance he has gotten.

His latest was telling Donovan McNabb that he wouldn’t want to go to the Raiders. Of course, it helped Hall get McNabb as a teammate, but it was a low class move. Everyone knows that the Raiders are run unlike any other professional sports franchise, but to continually rip a former employer gets old. It just makes Hall look bitter.

As the McNabb rumors were running their course, the Randy Hanson and Tom Cable incident broke the surface yet again. I wrote a breakdown of the legal mumbo jumbo on examiner.com. More than the legal side, this saga shows why the Raiders are a national punch line for talk hosts to jaw about.

This is something that the Raiders should have made go away about ten minutes after the Napa County District Attorney decided not to file charges. However, in a move that only the Raiders could understand, Hanson was brought back into the organization in December in a ‘non-coaching’ role. This only serves to exacerbate tensions within the organization. It also sends a message that the Raiders aren’t in full support of their head coach by putting his nemesis back to work in the building. By putting Hanson in a lesser role, they open themselves up to liability of their own in the case.

Ultimately, the best move for all involved would have been a buyout of his contract mixed with a good old fashioned confidentiality agreement. In other words, speak of it and and a lawsuit is coming your way. That would have let everything fade into the distant past. Instead, with it popping up again right before the draft, it hurts the organization in the eyes of potential draftees. Who knows, that could have been a deciding factor for McNabb to want to reject Oakland?

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For my article on Examiner tonight, I had the joy of going over the last ten years of first round draft picks for the Oakland Raiders. That is not an activity that should be undertaken by those without a strong constitution. Outside of Nnamdi Asomugha, not a single one of the 12 selections have worked out as expected. Well, Asomugha was expected as a reach at the time, but looking back was by far the best pick out of the group. The crazy thing is for the number of picks that haven’t worked out in retrospect, they were not bad picks at the time for the most part.

That track record does make it difficult to look forward to the draft coming in a couple of weeks. It would seem that even if Ndamukong Suh were to be drafted by the Raiders, he wouldn’t work out.

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Insightful comment of the week: On the post Raiders next move: Need to trade McFadden

DMAC
written by clintmtraider, March 29, 2010
They need to starting using him like the Eagles did with Brian Westbrook and move him around to create matchups in the passing game.

*****

Classic movie of the week:

Clear and Present Danger

Starting: Harrison Ford, Willem DaFoe, and Anne Archer

Caught this movie on demand the other night. I enjoy Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan books, so I figured I would sit through this adaptation. This one isn’t too bad. DaFoe does a good job as the intelligence man John Clark, and Harrison Ford is good at being a badass .The drawback was that much of the political intrigue subtext was subverted in the name of focusing on the action. For those who are Rainbox Six fans, Clear and Present Danger tells the story of the beginnings of Clark and Chavez’s partnership.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=
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