Reverberations after the latest Al Davis Presser

There have been some pretty massive reverberations after the last Al Davis press conference. I am sure that is because we have never seen a major sports figure look so terrible in public before. No joke. It is safe to say that the whole league is horrified. That's no joke either.

I myself was astonished by his appearance, and I don't usually react so strongly to these things, but I did this time. My first thought was "How can a man look so close to death and still be alive?" My second thought was "Why would you even want to show your face in public if your health were failing so badly?" I myself would chose to go into seclusion at that point in my life. I wouldn't want any photos take of me in such a state. I wouldn't want anyone to remember me like that.

I originally broke out my poisoned pen to craft leathal weapon. I wrote a no-holds bared, cry havok, kill-shot piece, but then I thought better of it. Obviously, the man's health is failing him completely. He suffering from horrendous skin cancer and liver problems. The Alzheimers continues to manifest itself. It's a horrible situation. He must be in terrible pain. I think I will end my life before I reach that point. No joke. I'm serious. A nice large dose of fentanyl would be preferable to such pain. Anyway, I decided to spare Al Davis my venom... which is hyper-abundant.

Instead, it is interesting to observe the conversation and debate that this press conference has triggered. We've been having this debate for 6 years now folks. It's obvious to everyone that Al Davis is decrepit and mentally incompetent, and yet he maintains absolute autocratic control over the Raiders. It stands to reason that no organization can succeed with its CEO in such a state, and still at the helm. Does Al Davis have to die before the Raiders will win again? Most believe the answer is yes.

It is very difficult to argue the contrary. How can you? I am at a loss to think of any other way out. You can go deep into denial, and say that Al's mind is fine, it's just his body that is failing him. This argument depends on a form of Cartesian mind/body dualism that is utterly false. The mind is part of the body. If some other part of the body fails, the mind will be seriously impacted. Furthermore, it is clear that his mind isn't there anymore. He makes big errors and small errors of every type when he is out in public. His management of the Raiders over the past 5 or 6 years has been preposterous. This points to the dimentia and Alzheimer's that have frequently been rumored.

Now we have both former and current employees of the Raider organization declaring that it is a nightmare to work for the Raiders. Al Davis's waking hours at Raider HQ are filled with bittness, angry tirades, and venom produced by the team's inability to win, and the loss of his personal health.

In the natural world of ordinary people, this is the moment in the cycle of life when we go into seclusion. We spend our last days with a few close family members and friends. We don't work. We don't concern ourselves with public obligations. We shed our public and private duties as we get ready to shuffle off this mortal coil. We make peace with ourself, our family and our friends. I saw my grandmother do this. I think she died well. I hope I can die that well when my time comes.

It is pathetic that Al cannot take his hands off the captain's wheel at this stage of life. I mean that in the dictionary sense of the term pathetic. It is a tragedy that this guy is so fixated that he's going to die (probably unexpectedly for him) slumped over the desk at Raider HQ. I wouldn't want to go that way. Maybe he does. In the meanwhile, there is something that is being tragically squandered, and that is his last days of watching his football team. If he would cash out and hand this team over to the right, young, ambitious, industrious man, he could watch the team blossom again in his last days. You know Al Davis will never do that.

The Pecking Order

A sober analysis of the Rams

The Rams have opened 0-2 for a fourth straight season. Week one featured a loss to the Cardinals. Week 2 featured a loss to the Raiders. Both games were close 17-13 and 16-14 respectively.

Both opponents are now 1-1, with victories at the Rams expense. Both teams were demolished completely by their other opponents. The Raiders were systematically annihilated by the Titans 38-13. The Cards were annihilated 41-7 by the Falcons.

Now for the complex part. The opponents of the opponents are both 1-1. The Falcons destroyed the Cardinals and became a 1-1 football team. The Titans destroyed the Raiders and are now 1-1. Who did the Falcons and Titans lose to? It was the same opponent, the Pittsburgh Steelers, who are now 2-0.

Stop me if I am wrong, but the Steelers are supposed to be vulnerable and beatable team right now lacking Ben Roethlisburger, am I right? Maybe not. However, most Las Vegas experts would not put money on the Steelers were they going against top-end competition like the Colts or the Saints. They probably wouldn't bet money on the Steelers were they going against the Texans either.

The way I see it, the Steelers are a second tier team, below the elites, especially in view of the fact that they lack Roethlisburger. They may change my mind very soon. We will see.

This would make the Falcons and Titans 3rd tier, or so it seems in the early going of this 2010 season. Yet the Falcons and Titans systematically annihilated the two opponents who have defeated the Rams.

So here we have our first whiff of an NFL pecking order, or ranking tree. Guess who is at the bottom-bottom? Well... the Vikings are 0-2 also. Yep, but they are not expected to finish with a losing record. Neither are they rebuilding... yet.

Because hope springs eternal, and fans are biased to believe whatever a General Manager tells them, there were some who were all jacked up about the Rams in the 2010 NFL Season. As you well know, I was not one of them. I believe we passed on many opportunities to acquire high-impact players. I'm am talking about all-pro players like Brandon Marshall, Alan Faneca, Thomas Jones, and Albert Haynesworth. In short, we did not do what we needed to do to produce a great-leap ahead.

The forces of truth would dictate that management should be honest about verities of the situation. You should try to bring down expectations, warning people that this going to be a rough year. This is only year 2 (or 3) of a comprehensive a-z rebuilding program. Tempering the enthusiasm with a little reality is the honest thing to do.

Against the forces of truth are the marketing forces. Marketing forces would remind us that the Rams were 29th in stadium attendance last season. They would remind us that the Rams are currently operating in the Red. They would remind us that the Rams just dished out 50/78 (86?) million dollar contract to Sam Bradford. They would remind us that the Rams are about to pitch a new Stadium proposal at the city fathers of St. Louis. If city fathers don't buy into it, it's time to move the franchise.

Who wins in the battle of truth v marketing? Marketing, by a knock-out. Truth goes down in flames.

So, the Rams' draft strategy in 2010 has not produced an instant-turnaround. We have not seen a great leap ahead. It has not produced a substantial change in the NFL pecking order.

We are still seeing a lot of guys rolling around on the ground defensively during enemy running plays. OH! I forgot, they were tackled by the turf monster. However, there are no holding calls when the turf monster tackles our front 7.

This would not have happened if we drafted Ndamukong Suh, kept Adam Carriker and traded for Albert Haynesworth. You know I was pissed about all of these issues. I wrote about these moves and anti-moves copiously in public forums.

Hey, I've got an idea: Let's draft a surgically repaired QB, who missed his senior season, provide spotty protection from an unproven line, poor receivers, run an outdated offense, with a bad coordinator, and let's tell the fans we are going to make a great leap forward. What do you say to that?

Great plan! Some might not buy it, but we are in a business where you just can't please everybody all the time. We have to accept that. This will work! It's sufficient for 2010.

The Assassin has died...

Requiem for Jack Tatum... I knew him, Horatio.

I was never much of a book reader as a youth or an adult. I greatly prefer practical technical manuals which instruct me in the ways of doing things. Novels, Bios, inspirational, self-help: It's a bunch of rubbish from my perspective. I know people read for entertainment. I find that notion extremely strange. That ain't entertainment from my point of view. It just isn't fun.

With that said, I read "They Call me Assassin" when I was a 14 year old youth. This was right around the time it was published. This book was Jack Tatum's first autobiography, written around the time the Raiders traded him to the Oilers. It might have been a year old. I was settling into my course of becoming a nose tackle around that time, and I felt it would be informative to read books written by the great defenders of history. I also read books by Dick Butkus, and Mike Curtis.

He covered a lot of turf in this book, his childhood, his recruitment by the Ohio State Buckeyes (which included a free hooker--whom he did not know was a hooker), his career with the Raiders, and especially the Daryl Stingley incident. Most of the talk today focuses on the Tatum-Stingley incident.

I want to go on the record and say that the first time I saw that hit my first reaction was one of stunned amazement: "That's all...??? That was one of the most unremarkable, non-savage hits Tatum ever dished out." I continue to think the same thing to this day. No number of replays have convinced me of anything else. It was non-remarkable hit. I have seen a hundred hits harder than that in past 2 years.

I want to go on the record and declare that I am a Raider-Hater. Whilst I have a great admiration for Tatum, I hate the Raiders. I have no tribal obligation to make this declaration. I simply believe it is true.

How then did it break Stingley's neck and leave him a quadriplegic? You got me there, buddy. The answer lies in the fluke happen-chance realm of quantum mechanics. God does play dice, contrary to what Einstein said. Tatum just happened to hit Stingley from exactly the right angle, at exactly the right velocity to create the precise impact force necessary to produce the injury.

If you think he calculated that out on a slide-rule and then executed the hit perfectly, you are crazy. I mean certifiably crazy. Tatum swooped in from center field and gave Stingley a light pop to knock him over. By fluke, it was just exactly the precise hit... I don't think for one second that Tatum meant to injury him. He would have hit him drastically harder if he had been up for that mission. Ask Sammy White about that kind of hit. Just watch the footage of Super Bowl XI.

Tatum didn't react much to the Stingley hit because he didn't believe Stingley was injured. Shaken perhaps, injured no. I have to say, without a-posteriori knowledge that Stingley's neck had been broken, I never would have suspected he was injured either. Quite a bit of "They Call me Assassin" deals with Tatum's psychological shock over the fact that this hit produced an injury. Believe me, I understand that. I too, am shocked that that hit produced an injury.

At least one odious blog declares Tatum has finally gone to Hell for that hit. I think that's rubbish. Tatum never intended to harm Stingley with that hit, and I know for a fact that he struggled with the guilt over that hit. A better analysis says something like Tatum killed Stingley and we made him do it. Football is a brutal sport. Just about all ex-players die as a result of it later on. When the alternative is to die because of something else a little later, we accept these consequences, although we frequently have regrets.

Incidentally, everyone has regrets in life. As the great existentialist philosopher Søren Aabye Kierkegaard said: Do this and you will regret it. Don't do this and you will regret it. Do that and you will regret it. Don't do that, and you will regret it.

Flukes happen. This was a fluke. It was a terrible fluke. It was a bad, awful, dreadful fuke, but it was a fluke.

I want to go on the record and declare that Tatum was the absolute hardest hitter in NFL history. Number 2 isn't all that close. No, Ronnie Lott did not hit as hard as Tatum. He was much less savage a hitter. He gave a good pop, but that is all. I would be willing to allow that Lott was a better overall-defender, but he was not a harder hitter.

Only Dick Butkus can rank close to Tatum in terms of hitting ferocity, but because of his slower foot speed, he could not muster the velocity necessary to produce those kinds of violent impacts. Velocity is king. Double the velocity and you quadruple the impact force. I don't doubt that Tatum hit players at twice the speed Butkus did. I don't doubt this produced superior force. Butkus was more massive, and that helps his cause, but the much greater speed of Tatum produced more devastating hits.

Watching a man get hit by Tatum was like watching a human body experience the impact of 1 ounce shotgun slug. The shock went through their bodies, and they dropped dead. Just check out the Earl Campbell hit. That is a legendary moment in NFL history.

Tatum suffered terrible heath problems later in life, which is a study in Football Karma. There are natural cause-and-effect consequences that follow after being the hardest hitter in NFL history. He battled diabetes for years. Portions of both his legs were amputated as a result of circulatory problems stemming from diabetes. I am sure he had plenty of arthritis and orthopedic problems to go with it. Ultimately, a heart attack on Tuesday took his life.

For many of us, death comes as friend. It delivers us from a lot of pain and suffering. It was like this for my grandmother, who died after a painful battle with cancer. I am sure it was like this for Tatum also. I am fairly sure it will be like that for me.

Understand that Jack suffers pain no more. The same is true for Daryl Stingley. I hope the two reconcile somewhere else and at some other time.