Al Davis: State of the Raiders

[Rhode Raider]

Al Davis: State of the Raiders
January 21, 2004

The Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis covered a variety of issues today during a briefing with the media. Following are some of the topics covered by the Hall of Fame owner of the Raiders:


Raiders owner Al Davis spoke to the media in the auditorium at the team's Alameda facility.


ON WHY HE BRIEFED THE MEDIA TODAY:

Raiders owner Al Davis: Originally this was supposed to be a meeting with the beat writers. I had said to them after the season that I would sit with them and talk about the season, talk about any issues that they would like to discuss. What happened was with the intelligence of the Public Relations department and our executives, they suggested that we bring everybody, the columnists, the electronic media or most importantly whoever wanted to come and that's why we're all here together this afternoon. We had an Iowa caucus, a State of the Union address, and I felt it would be apropos now, a State of the Union of the Raiders. I'm just speaking to the great fans of the Raiders all over the nation, all over the world and certainly in the Bay Area, the greatness of the Raiders will continue in the future. There are years of glory, there are few years of defeat, and make no mistake about it, 2003 was a year of defeat.

ON THE PROCESS OF HIRING A NEW HEAD COACH:

Raiders owner Al Davis: No coach has been hired. There will be a time period before a coach is hired, and until that period, and until we make the announcement, I say to you, and you know one thing, whenever I talk to you like this, whatever I said has come straight forward, no coach has been hired. And where this got started was assumption and just carried.

ON THE INTERVIEW PROCESS FOR A NEW HEAD COACH:

Raiders owner Al Davis: Sean Payton is not the last guy I'm going to interview. Sean Payton has a lot of good credentials, but I don't know if that is the way we are going to go. You people assumed that he was the candidate. I don't think that is fair because we never said it. There is no timetable. The thing here is to be right. I don't think Sean Payton turned down the job because Sean Payton was never offered the job.

ON WHETHER THE TEAM WAS IN 'DISARRAY' LAST SEASON:

Raiders owner Al Davis: I would tell you that it isn't, never has been. What has happened we consider normal and I don't know what you mean by 'disarray.' We didn't win if that's what you mean by 'disarray.' You have to win in this business, nothing else matters other than life or death. This culture, professional football, it's who wins. It's not in disarray by any means. We know exactly what happened this year.

ON FORMER RAIDERS SENIOR ASSISTANT BRUCE ALLEN LEAVING THE ORGANIZATION:

"Are we close enough
to come back by doing
certain things? Or are
we legitimately far
enough away to go
in another direction?
That's a decision we
have to make."
- Raiders owner Al Davis

Raiders owner Al Davis: Let me make a point to you. To be specific, let me take you back to 1975. We had just lost a championship game and I had a young man who had worked with me for 12 years in player personnel. He was excellent. And he wanted to become a general manager in professional football and he wanted to get the Tampa Bay expansion job. And I believe young people should go. No one in our executive organization has ever had a contract. If you're young, and you want to go and you want to be your own man and see if you can be the general manager, I encourage it. Well, anyhow, his name was Ron Wolf. And he left. About two years later, we won the Super Bowl. And then he was on his way home because after three years he left Tampa. John Herrera, who's standing right there, who worked for us for many years, as you all know, he went to Tampa with that group as the Director of Scouting. I can tell you that in the 1990s, Steve Ortmayer came to me, he was in Bruce's job, what Bruce was doing, player personnel and things like that, and said that he wanted to be the general manager of the San Diego Chargers. He called Alex Spanos; he became the General Manager of the San Diego Chargers. Within approximately three years he was back. He stayed awhile and then he wanted to be the General Manager of the Rams. And that became a reality. And now he's at the University of Kentucky, as an assistant head coach. What I'm saying to you, movement is our history, is our culture, in America. A lot of people here right now came from the East, are out here for jobs, for things like that. Bruce did an excellent job in three areas, the cap, the signing of contracts, and of course as a spokesperson. We have young people ready to move in, and it's something that is normal in a transient business. Players leave, they retire. I think we were hurt more in the past five years by two retirements of two great players. For example, we lost Napoleon Kaufman to the ministry, and we lose a guy like Steve Wisniewski, who could be still playing, to the ministry. It's hard to believe this. So what I'm saying to you is that in professional football these things happen. Al LoCasale retired. There's no question that Al was a valuable assistant for a long time, but people do retire. They get older. I just don't know where else you'd want to go to characterize it. It's normal in my life, movement and things like that.

ON PLAYER DISSENSION:


Raiders owner Al Davis: Well, that's a part of life too. I think we've had that before on great teams. Now the thing with the coach and the players, that's something that I don't think we've ever had here really to the extent that it went last year. It was an evolution of events. And the coach is gone. We'll see what happens with some of the players. That's just when a team is losing, some things like that happen. I want to give you a "for instance," if I could, just to give you an example, and I'm not in any way chastising him, I'm going to point something out. Dick Vermeil has been back in football six years, three years with the Rams, three years with the Kansas City Chiefs. He's been in the playoffs two years of the six years, but the last time he was in the playoffs was this year, so it looks pretty good. But he'd been with the Rams three years and everyone thought he was going to get fired. The players were groaning, they didn't want to work that hard, they were tough on him publicly, and his star quarterback got hurt. He put another guy in the game, Kurt Warner, and they think they're out of business after this season, they think they're going to lose, and they win the Super Bowl. What I'm saying to you is, from these types of things, come excellence too. This year, after the first game of the season, the New England Patriots lost to the Buffalo Bills, something like 30 to nothing. They had given up Lawyer Milloy that same week to the Buffalo Bills. Lawyer Milloy had been the captain of the New England Patriots. Players were upset. I'll never forget sitting there on ESPN, and Tommy Jackson said that Bill Belichick has lost control of his team; they're done for the year. Well, I just read today where Bill's the greatest coach we've had in about the past 15 years. I know this, that when I was choosing between Jon Gruden and Bill Belichick (for the Raiders head coaching position in 1998), someone wrote a column stating we don't want Bill Belichick out here. He can't get along with the press, he can't get along with anybody. One other columnist wrote, two years ago about Belichick that he's the worst coach in the history of football. Well, he may well be, but he's going to the Super Bowl, and he's the worst coach? I am saying to you, and I'm not defending us because we didn't win. There are a lot of games that went down to the wire, you were there, and we couldn't get it done. We didn't win. That's the thing in our lives. I'll never forget, John Madden called after the eighth game of the season and said, "What is it?" I said, "Well, we're not scoring," which we weren't, "but we're not winning." The winner writes the history book in professional football.

ON THE RAIDERS 2003 SEASON:

Raiders owner Al Davis: Well, I think I would know what happened, but I'm not here to chastise anybody or anything like that. I don't think I've chastised anybody really, in public, a player, a coach, or anything. I say this, we didn't score, and we didn't win. That's what happened. A lot of games that came down into the final minute or so we made some decisions that maybe weren't right, and maybe we didn't make a play or two that weren't right, and we'd lose the game. Well, I'll say this about this football team. You're right. Last year, we played in the Super Bowl. We were terrible that day, the day of the Super Bowl. But we did a lot of good things that year. For example, we had come off the "Tuck Game," up in New England. They beat us. Then we got them out here two years ago, we beat them. We beat Houston, I mean Tennessee, I always call them Houston. We beat Tennessee pretty good. We played everybody tough even last year. We beat Minnesota. Kansas City was two tough games. What I'm saying to you is we have to make a decision over the next three months, four months. Are we close enough to come back by doing certain things? Or are we legitimately far enough away to go in another direction? That's a decision we have to make. But the main thing is we didn't score, in my opinion, and we didn't win.

ON BILL CALLAHAN DISCIPLINING CHARLES WOODSON AND CHARLIE GARNER BY HOLDING THEM OUT OF THE FINAL GAME OF THE SEASON:

Raiders owner Al Davis: The coach made the determination of what to do. I was called Sunday morning by Bruce Allen in San Diego and he said we had a problem last night. He told me what the problem was and said that Bill was going to send them home and I said, I don't know if I would do that, it is the last game of the season. He's had enough problems; let's treat it like we normally would treat it. I went upstairs (after arriving at the stadium) to watch the early games on the cable and when I came downstairs onto the field Bruce said that coach had sent them home and that was it. He suspended them from the game. He took them out of the locker room and sent them home. No, I do not get involved into those types of decisions as much as you guys think. I am the organization, I run the organization, and whatever happens has to come back to me eventually and I accept it. I would think the coach can do those things.



Mr. Davis covered a variety of topics, including the team's process for hiring a new head coach.

ON WHETHER THE AGE OF SOME OF THE PLAYERS HAD A NEGATIVE EFFECT LAST SEASON:

Raiders owner Al Davis: I always worry about having great players. The injuries were not necessarily a factor predicated on age, because we had young players who got hurt. In fact it is funny because the two guys that everyone gives the word age to were Jerry Rice and Tim Brown and they were never hurt. They practice all the time. Now we watch them and are careful with their reps, but they did not get hurt. Yes, there was poor play. I do not think it was due to age.

ON WHETHER THE RAIDERS WILL COMPETE FOR FREE AGENTS DESPITE BEING NEAR THE BOTTOM AMONG NFL TEAMS IN REVENUE:

Raiders owner Al Davis: Yes, I think someone asked me about that five years ago. We will be competitive, we want to win. That is the idea of the Raiders. Let me make this point to you, we do $50 million a year less than the Denver Broncos and we do $80-100 million a year less in revenue than the Washington Redskins. We are at the bottom of the 32 teams. We are 30, 31 or 32 always. We do have one thing. We still have the mystique, we still have the aura, and we still have some great things going for us with players and we want to win.

ON OFFENSIVE PHILOSOPHY:

Raiders owner Al Davis: What I would say to you on that is I am interested in us getting in the end zone and scoring. There are some people who believe in scheme. Scheme is the essence of winning; confuse the other guy, move around, shift, a lot of formations. There are some people; you are seeing it that are pretty basic like Carolina, the old style of football. Execution, run the ball, heavy blocking inside, heavy pass protection inside, and some people who believe in-between. One thing we have to do is score more.

ON LOOKING FORWARD TO 2004:

Raiders owner Al Davis: I'm close to thinking what I want to do. But, I also have to take into consideration the new head coach, the staff, and the scouts. We have six college scouts that have been with us for a very long time. They're all down in Mobile, watching the players. And also, there's the balance of power in the league and the division. Kansas City is very tough, but they're not very tough on defense. There's lots of room there for improvement. Denver is very tough and San Diego, I am sure will get better, because of Wade Phillips coming in as the defensive coordinator. We have a tough schedule next year. If you look at our schedule it is a very tough schedule.

http://www.raiders.com/newsroom/news...l.jsp?id=10535

[De-Cleater]

maybe it was all for the press but he seems rationale and not in BAD HEALTH! He seems like he is a guy with a finger on the team...at least to me!

[number8ondeck]

Hey Rhode-Thanks for the update on Al's discussion with the media. Sometimes he's a hard dude to figure, but there's a lot of insight into what makes Al tick in that transcription.I think he wants to give the Head Coach the power to motivate the team without too much behind the scenes muscle, like Jerry Jones was doing so much with Dallas(until the Tuna showed up). Al's been keeping a low profile, but he definitely makes it known that he's the "Big Kahuna"(no offense, Big Kahuna). He did say in one interview that he might have helped avoid some of the problems if he had stepped in during the season when Cal lost control.

[Mr.Murder]

Al has a man who is all about execution in Mr.Norv Turner. The man has simple style, less reliance scheme.
He added motivators as well, McInnis, Ryan.
Look for some big games by napo, we have the man to keep people off of our MLB.Washington will make teams one dimensional by helping take away run options. Once teams have to go all pass it lets Woodson and Buch do what they do best- make plays.

Simple,straight ahead football. Execute every play. The Tao of Turner .