FanHouse Sebastian Janikowski

With Fantasy Football season ready to kick in high gear, FanHouse is here to preview each and every team -- one per day until we've done them all.

Meet the ...
Running game that needs help from the passing game. One thing is for sure, the Oakland Raiders can run the football. They finished 10th in the NFL last season in rushing offense. The problem is that they only had nine rushing touchdowns (only three teams had less), which we can attribute to the fact that the Raiders had the worst passing offense in the NFL.

If the Raiders can find a way to stretch the field and move the ball through the air, expect the rushing game to get even better.

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It doesn't matter your affiliation to a certain team, we can all admit that, during a sports year, athletes make just as many idiotic decisions on the field as they do off it. You have backward passes, premature celebrations, and rare "I'm not even sure what was supposed to be happening there" plays that can make you go bald from all the head scratching. This year was no different in the NFL, and here is what we came up with as the NFL's dumbest plays of 2008.

Dan Orlovsky's Phantom Safety -- Do you want to know how bad this play actually was? When bringing this idea up to the FanHouse football group, all I had to say about this play was, "Dan Orlovsky." Everyone knew which play I was talking about. The poor guy was thrown into a terrible situation in Detroit, and decided his legacy was going to be "running out of the back of the end zone without ever really knowing what went on." Running out of the end zone as a quarterback is one thing ... not knowing you did so and continuing the play is quite another. I can guarantee Orlovsky one thing -- his video will be shown by high-school coaches all around the nation as what not to do when stuffed back by your own end zone.

The Free Kick Attempt by Neil Rackers -- It sure wasn't the dumbest play of the year, but it was definitely the most confusing. With five seconds left in the first half against the Giants, Ken Whisenhunt actually made the decision to opt for a "free kick," even though nobody knew what in the world a free kick was. Rackers set the ball up on a tee, rared back his heavy leg and ... muffed it. Not only was it unsuccessful, but it gave the Giants a chance to return it. I guess the good news was that we learned what a free kick was and that Rackers has no 68-yard leg.

While doing my daily rounds through cyberspace yesterday morning, I stumbled across a stat on the fantasy sports site, Rotoworld, that I found just a little hard to believe. Apparently, the Oakland Raiders have scored only one touchdown in the first half of their games this season. One.

They didn't provide a link to confirm this embarrassing factoid, so I decided to look it up, just to make sure. And you know what? They were right. Sort of.

As it turns out, the Raiders have actually scored two first-half touchdowns this season, though, only one came with the offense on the field. During the Raiders' Week 4 loss to San Diego, tight end Zach Miller hauled in a 63-yard touchdown pass from JaMarcus Russell. Other than that? The only scoring done by the silver and black before the half this season has been from the foot of Sebastian Janikowski, or on an 89-yard punt return by Johnnie Lee Higgins.

Doesn't that get you excited for tonight's Raiders-Chargers tilt?

On a day where coaches around the National Football League were making ridiculous and absurd calls from the sidelines, defying all human logic and sound reasoning, Oakland head coach Tom Cable may have outdone them all.

Here's the situation: Oakland is facing a fourth-and-10 from the Kansas City 25-yard line in a 3-3 tie. Cable, naturally, sends out the special teams unit to attempt a 42-yard field goal. A successful kick would have given the Raiders a 6-3 lead early in the second quarter. Makes sense, and honestly, it should have been a routine play. Which is probably why the Raiders still managed to screw it up.

Instead of kicking, the Raiders called a fake field goal which resulted in punter Shane Lechler lateraling the ball under his legs, while Sebastian Janikowski, the team's 260-pound monster of a kicker, was, presumably, supposed to outrun the Chiefs special teams unit to the first down marker. On what planet is this a good idea?

As one would expect, everything went terribly wrong.

The San Jose Mercury News' Tim Kawakami must be having all sorts of fun with the Raiders' current predicament. In case you missed it, Kawakami had a contentious exchange with Davis lackey John Herrera following a Sept. press conference from then-head coach Lane Kiffin (who must also be having all sorts of fun right about now).

After the team's latest debaclement -- a 17-6 loss to the Panthers that included four Jake Delhomme interceptions -- Kawakami wonders why the Raiders chose to trot Sebastian Janikowski out for a end-of-game 58-yard field goal since, you know, they're only worth three points.

The Oakland Raiders nearly watched yet another fourth quarter lead turn into defeat, only to find a way to sneak out of Sunday's game with a 16-13 win over the New York Jets, giving Tom Cable his first win as Head Coach.

It had to a bad omen, or something, when Cable tried to ice Jets kicker Jay Feely at the end of regulation as Feely was lining up to kick a 52-yard field goal. Cable tried the "I'm going to call a timeout just before you snap it" trick, and was laughingly burned when Feely hit the upright on the kick that didn't count. Feely drilled the mulligan, of course, sending the game to overtime.

I figured this strategy would play its way out of the NFL after a few moments like that, yet here we are.

Raiders kicker Sebastian Janikowski mercifully ended a brutal overtime period -- personally, I was rooting for the tie -- when he crushed a 57-yard field goal with less than three minutes to play. The kick probably would have been good from about 65. Either way, it was the longest overtime field goal in NFL history.

Antonio Cromartie made a name for himself when he set the league record for longest play in NFL history, running a missed field goal 109.9 yards the other way for a touchdown. He was able to do this because he is quite fast.

In other words, if you're playing against the Chargers, you probably shouldn't attempt a frivolously long field goal, because there's the chance they will run it back on you.

And if you're Lane Kiffin and your job is still on the line and you need the ball to travel and NFL record (I believe) 76 yards in order to pick up three points and you are somehow already holding onto a double digit lead against your division rival, well, you definitely shouldn't do it.

But Kiffin missed that memo, apparently, sending Sebastian Janikowski out onto field with one second left to try and kick a 76 yard field goal. This would somehow be less ridiculous, I suppose, if Kiffin hadn't tried something like this last year, with similar results.

Of course, as MDS pointed out then, KOWSKI did have enough leg to donk it 70 yards, so maybe this wasn't that crazy. Or maybe it was -- the ball was fielded outside the goal line and could have resulted in six for the Chargers were it not for a tackle by the Raiders.

I like to gamble as much as the next person, but the Raiders were sitting on a 15 point lead at the time, and really, it was just unnecessary.

The Dallas Morning News' Albert Breer is not impressed with you, Tiger Woods. Sure, you had a double stress fracture and a torn ACL, walked more than 21 miles over five days, and gave one of the grittiest performances in major championship history, but, apparently, it wasn't enough. You want tough? How about ... Philip Rivers? Really?

Breer tries to explain:

...[L]et's stop with all the breathless homages. Put the Purple Heart away. While there was some appreciation for it, I don't remember all this slobbering over someone going on in January, after Philip Rivers did something far more impressive. He played in a football game, in freezing conditions, against a 17-0 team through a similar injury.

Well, I did my fair share of slobbering, and I'm not even a Philip Rivers fan. That said, I think it's ridiculous to compare the two. Breer admits to appreciating Tiger's accomplishment, and calls the feat impressive, but adds, "Is [comparing Woods to Philips] even close. No. Way."

He falls into the lazy trap of saying that all Tiger did was "hit golf balls," because "last time I checked, there are plenty of people who aren't in very good physical condition who can endure 18 holes." First, did you really check? I'm guessing no. Second, have you seen Grady Jackson, Sebastian Janikowski or Jared Lorenzen? Am I grossly oversimplifying things? Exactly.

But Breer's readers make my point better than I do:

The world will little note, nor long remember, today's Raiders-Texans game, also known as the other game CBS showed this afternoon. I would have to assume, given that the Colts-Patriots game was being shown to almost the entire country, that Raiders- Texans was among the least-watched NFL games in television history.

But one very noteworthy thing happened: Raiders coach Lane Kiffin sent in Sebastian Janikowski to try a 64-yard field goal. And although Janikowski missed, he didn't miss short. He hit the upright, and in fact the ball bounced off the middle of the upright. There is no doubt in my mind that the kick had enough distance to clear the crossbar from 70 yards.

The NFL record is 63 yards. So, yeah, 64 yards is pretty long, and a 64-yard try that's long enough to clear the upright easily is a ridiculously powerful kick.

Of course, it was kinda dumb of Kiffin to send Janikowski out there for a 64-yard try, seeing as it gave the Texans great field position when Janikowski missed. But hey, it gave us a reason to talk about the Raiders.

If you want to see Janikowski's kick, you can watch it in the game highlights at NFL.com.

Every week, NFL FanHouse hits the lowlights from Sunday's action, looking at those players who did the most to move their head coaches that much closer to returning to the Bed and Breakfast business.

Norv Turner, Chargers
Norvell is a masochist. There' s no other way to explain it. He's arguably one of the smartest offensive minds in football, yet give him a chance to run the whole operation and you can forget about it. I mean, this is the guy who served as Troy Aikman's mentor in Dallas, and helped 2005 first-overall pick Alex Smith come into his own last year.

But in three head-coaching stops that span parts of 10 seasons, Turner is 59-84-1, including 1-2 start this season. Now if this is San Diego and it's 2000, a 1-2 start is cause for a parade (the '00 team finished 1-15). But it's 2007 and the club is coming off a 14-2 effort. An effort, I might add, that got Marty Schottenheimer canned. And after San Diego's uninspired performance against the Packers, I'm guessing fans are pining for the mind-numbing predictability of Martyball.

DeAngelo Hall, Falcons
You can't blame Joey Harrington for this one. All he did was complete 31 of 44 passes for 361 yards and two touchdowns. This honor, without a doubt, goes to cornerback DeAngelo Hall. The former first-round pick, who often does more talking than covering, blanketed All-World wideout Steve Smith for much of the afternoon (Smith finished with one catch for six yards). So it may seem odd that Hall's a Coach Killer.