By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
You’re a Raiders fan, and you wonder what else can happen. The team finally gets out of its decade-deep hole, one that’s silver as much as black, and the owner wants to sneak it over the border.
It has a quarterback worthy of the chant, “MVP, MVP,” and not only does he get hurt, a broken leg no less, but so does his backup.
©2017 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
A little bit of a chip on his shoulder.
That was Jack Del Rio’s succinct description of the man who, unexpectedly — and because of the situation, unfortunately — is now the Raiders’ starting quarterback: Matt McGloin.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
OAKLAND, Calif. — The reference was to education. The Raiders, the head coach, the quarterback, kept using the word “learning,” as if this season, going from bad to worse to “Please don’t use the word dreadful,” is something for which they’ll get a grade from the friendly prof down the hall.
While the Raiders are being schooled, so are the rest of us, learning first that the team probably needs a quarterback, that Matt McGloin doesn’t appear to be the man of future or the present and Terrelle Pryor doesn’t seem to be much of anything — at least in the eyes of those in charge.
Johnny Manziel, you say? Only if the Raiders can do more in the 2014 draft then they were able to do against the Kansas City Chiefs.
It was a brutal Sunday at O.co Coliseum, chilly, mortifying, at least for the majority of the 49,571 fans. Kansas City, as effective as the Raiders were inept, beat Oakland, 56-31, the Raiders allowing the most points in the history of a franchise that came into existence in 1960.
McGloin threw four interceptions and lost a fumble. Pryor, who was inserted now and then for no good reason or maybe for a very good reason, threw one interception. And there was another lost fumble on a kickoff by Taiwan Jones, making it seven turnovers for the Raiders.
Maybe they were lucky they only gave up 56 points.
“You can’t play a good team like that and turn the ball over seven times,” said Raiders coach Dennis Allen, now 4-10 in this second season of his regime. Yes you can. The implication was if you do that you’ll get buried. And the Raiders were buried.
The defense wasn’t much either. Kansas City, on a long kickoff return and a 49-yard screen pass, scored the first of its eight touchdowns just 22 seconds into the game. Running back Jamaal Charles tied a Chiefs record with five touchdowns. And he didn’t play a considerable part of the fourth quarter.
McGloin, the undrafted free agent, played most of the game. He completed half of his 36 pass attempts for 297 yards and two touchdowns. But those four picks, one returned for a touchdown, made one wonder if he has the right stuff to be a starter in the NFL.
“There are always difficult situations,” said Allen, a defensive specialist defending his two rookie quarterbacks. “But hopefully those guys can learn from those mistakes. It’s tough when you’re going through the learning process, because as the losses mount up it gets frustrating.”
The real question is whether Oakland dares depend on either McGloin, who began the season a fourth-string QB, or Pryor, the surprise starter in Game 1 but later injured, beyond this year. Do the Raiders rely either on a quarterback ignored in the draft or another who is more of a runner than a passer for the coming seasons?
Or do they start over, perhaps with one of the top college players who seemingly will be available?
Nobody in the organization will comment until the end of this season, but Allen, explaining the Pryor-for-McGloin-for-Pryor shift and juggle said, “Obviously we’ve got two guys that we want to be able to utilize, and we’ve got to find ways to get explosive plays.
“And we were able to get explosive plays today. We got a lot of balls down the field. We had a lot of explosive passes, as well as explosive penalties. We just weren’t consistent enough, and we can’t turn the ball over like we did. We have to do a better job on our red zone defense of making them have to kick field goals.”
But they were unable. They are unable. This team, glued together from bits and scraps, tormented by the salary cap, has shredded and shriveled in recent weeks.
The defense is worn and battered. The supposedly best offensive player, running back Darren McFadden, always is injured. McGloin is a notch down from the elite level. Pryor is unpolished.
“We had some good drives,” was McGloin’s analysis. “We had some poor drives. I’ll learn from it. We’ll learn from it. I’ll get better from it, and I know the rest of the guys will get better from it.”
Will he? Will they? This was the fifth game McGloin has started. It was anything but encouraging. He’s learning, but so are the opponents about McGloin. They step in front of his receivers. They chase him out of the pocket.
“I’m at a loss for words,” McGloin said of the turnovers. “It’s disappointing. But at the same time we were still in the game. It was 35-31 at one point with all the turnovers.
“There’s always passes you kind of wish you could pull back, but that’s part of the game. They did make some good plays, but some of those throws were poor decisions.”
McGloin, denying reality, insisted he isn’t auditioning for next year, when in effect, even while trying to win now, he and the other Raiders, young and older, are playing for their future.
“We’re going to learn from the poor decisions, the mistakes,” said McGloin. “As long as we know what they are, I can go away saying that the more experience I get, I’ll learn from it.”
If, indeed, it will make any difference to him or the Raiders.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
ALAMEDA, Calif. — Whether Matt McGloin, undrafted but now hardly unwanted, is the Oakland Raiders' quarterback of the future isn't the issue at the moment. He's the quarterback of the present, the one who will face the Jets Sunday at MetLife Stadium.
The one whom coach Dennis Allen keeps giving vocal support, even as Allen occasionally refers to Terrelle Pryor, who was the Oakland starter for eight of the first nine games this season.
Read the full story here.
Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
OAKLAND — The answers were not there, at least from the people who needed to give them, the field goal kicker, his holder and, even though it’s his job to protect the men who play for him — no matter their lack of performance — the head coach.
The Raiders, well, still are the Raiders, a team of almosts and could-have-beens, a team that when presented a chance to take a resounding step out from the depths of mediocrity remains notably incapable.
Tennessee got a touchdown pass, a 10-yarder from Ryan Fitzpatrick to Kendall Wright with only 10 seconds remaining Sunday, and came back to beat the Raiders, 23-19. And so Oakland is 4-7, and the good thoughts after last weekend’s win over Houston become worthless.
Especially with a game at Dallas on Thanksgiving.
The man once called the premier place kicker in the NFL, Sebastian Janikowski, attempted six field goals for the Raiders, tying his own team record, which tells you something about the Oakland offense, able to score only one touchdown.
“Seabass” missed two of those attempts, one from 32 yards, which tells you a great deal about Janikowski, who at age 35 and playing his 14th season as a pro no longer seems reliable.
As a kicker, that is. He’s never been reliable as a postgame interview.
When the media flooded into the Raider locker room at O.co Coliseum, both Janikowski and his holder, punter Marquette King, conveniently had fled the scene, thereby avoiding any queries about what happened on the misses, especially the figurative chip shot, the 32-yarder.
It was reported that after that one, tried with four seconds left in the half and Oakland ahead 9-6, Janikowski told sideline reporter Lincoln Kennedy — the former Raider lineman — he was not pleased with King’s hold.
This is the first year for King, who replaced Shane Lechler, but this was the 11th game of the season.
Dennis Allen, the Raiders' coach, probably wished he didn’t have to face the music or the media, but that is a requirement of the job. That doesn’t mean Allen has to disclose his true feelings or symbolically throw his athletes under the bus.
So Allen, looking and sounding particularly glum, conceded, “There’s several things that you can look back on — we missed two field goals, we let them come out and get the lead at halftime, third downs weren’t good enough . . . ”
Not at all. The Titans had 18 third-down plays, and made first downs on 10 of them, two times on third and 11. Fitzpatrick, Harvard educated, outsmarted or outplayed the Oakland defense. Tennessee hung on to the ball. The Titans’ time of possession was almost 36 minutes.
But if Janikowski hits those fielders, the Raiders win. Indeed, as the adage tells us, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Grudgingly we try to forget the “what-ifs.”
Still, Seabass is paid big money to make place kicks, especially little ones.
He hit on field goals of 52, 48 and 24 yards, but missing that 32-yarder — wide left — just before intermission was a blow psychologically as well as numerically. If he makes that field goal, the Raiders are six ahead as they prance off the turf, and they’re feeling particularly satisfied. This was unsatisfying.
“We’re not making them,” said Allen, “not consistently enough.” “We,” in effect, might mean “he,” as in Janikowski, but successful place kicking requires all sorts of individuals: the snapper, the blockers, the holder and not least the kicker, in the Raiders’ case the left-footed Janikowski.
“I feel like Sebastian is going to work through this,” Allen said. “I have all the confidence that when I send him out there it’s going to go through. So it’s just something that we have to go through and get better in that area.”
His explanation is known as “coach-speak,” words that when linked together tell us very little.
Matt McGloin, the undrafted rookie from Penn State, was the Raiders’ starter at quarterback for a second straight game. He had four passes knocked down, and because he’s listed at only 6-foot-1 and pro teams like their QBs at least 6-4, one might sense a reason McGloin was not picked in the draft.
McGloin did make a nice throw to fullback Marcel Reece, who ran down the sideline for a 27-yard touchdown with some six minutes left in the game to give Oakland a 19-16 lead.
“I thought Matt played well,” said Allen. “He led us back when we needed a touchdown, got us the touchdown to give us the lead. We just couldn’t hold it defensively.”
Not untrue. Either is the issue of whether on field goals the ball is being held properly and then kicked properly.
“I’d say it’s a field goal unit problem,” explained Allen. “There are 11 guys out there; it’s not all on one guy. We have to improve in that area — snap, kick, protection. The goal is to get the ball through the uprights . . . ”
Which the Raiders could do only four times out of six tries and thus lost by four points. That hurts.