FanHouse Art Shell

It's been a few weeks since the Oakland Raiders front office put themselves in the news, so I guess they figured it was a good time to bring us all some entertainment on Wild Card weekend, with a little help from ESPN's Chris Mortensen.

On Sunday, Mortensen passed along some inside information that Al Davis, owner of the Raiders, was attempting to sell a portion of the team to billionaire Dean Metropoulos. This did not go over well in Davis' lair, according to Steve Corkran of the Oakland Tribune.

Keep in mind, during Davis' bizarre press conference following the firing of Lane Kiffin, Davis referred to Mortensen as "a professional liar," so I'm guessing if Mortensen reported the sky outside his office as being blue, Davis would probably find a way to dispute the report. Anyway, here's what John Herrera had to say on the matter after speaking with Davis.

"The report from Chris Mortensen which states that the Raiders, Al Davis and Amy Trask are in negotiations with Dean Metropoulous to sell the team is totally unfounded and false," Herrera said. "Once again, for reasons known only to him, Mortensen has fabricated a story which has no basis in fact."

I can't envision a situation where someone of sound mind would agree to take the Raiders' head coaching gig, given what's happened since owner Al Davis fired Bill Callahan in 2003. We've seen Norv Turner, Art Shell, Lane Kiffin and now Tom Cable amass 17 wins in four-plus seasons. Staggering.

So maybe Oakland's best hope is to find an eager, young, bright football mind, someone who would use the opportunity to get some experience, while changing the culture of losing in the process. You know, somebody like, say, Lane Kiffin.

Or maybe not. The New York Daily News' Gary Myers has a suggestion:

Former Giants coach Jim Fassel fits the profile to be the Raiders' next head coach: He wants to coach again. After the Lane Kiffin disaster, Al Davis is not going to hire another coach barely out of diapers. The hot assistants are not going to want that land mine as their first NFL head coaching job. So that leaves the recycled coaches.

Myers points out that Fassel lost out to Herm Edwards in Kansas City, Scott Linehan in St. Louis and Kiffin in Oakland, which raises more questions than it answers, I think. Fassel, who took the Giants to the Super Bowl in 2000, couldn't beat out three guys who have subsequently run their respective teams into the ground, and two of them have already been fired?

Good news, Lane Kiffin: you got nothing to worry about. Javon Walker, Raiders' offseason signee and Vegas beatdown victim, contemplated retirement last week before owner Al Davis convinced him to stick it out. But after some thought, Walker is "fully committed" to Oakland, which means that Kiffin can worry about the truly important stuff. Like figuring out a way to keep JaMarcus Russell upright behind the offensive line.

"I want people to know why I thought about it, but I also want it to go away, too," Walker said. "But people need to know I am fully committed to this team. I will not leave. I am very excited about the season."

"I had had a lot of things going on internally," Walker said. "That's why I offered to write that check. I did not want the team to suffer. ... However, I have cleared my head and the people here have been great to me. I will be fine."

I don't blame Walker for thinking about walking away; sometimes fans assume professional athletes lead stress-free, booty-filled existences. The latter might be true, but the former certainly isn't. At times, I'm sure the pressure can be suffocating, particularly for 20-somethings not used to gobs of cash and the notoriety that goes with it.

Hopefully, Walker is committed to the Raiders because they're going to need him. It probably won't be enough to return this team to its pre-Art Shell form, but seven or eight wins would be nice. If nothing else, it'll offer the fans some hope.

I didn't even know this was up for debate, but during his radio show yesterday, Dan Patrick asked recently retired Raiders defensive tackle Warren Sapp if Al Davis was still the puppet master in Oakland. Sapp confirmed what the rest of us just assumed to be true:

"Fully. When I went there a few months ago, no doubt about it. Sitting there, talking with him about my plans, right before the last game of the year, watching Randy Moss and Tom Brady go get a 16-0 record. He had a big-screen TV, and we were there watching it," Sapp said. "He's definitely in full control. Don't kid yourself because you see the man in a walker. There's nothing wrong with his brain."

Exactly. Just like Stephen Hawking and Charles Xavier, Davis' limitations are strictly physical. If you're looking for a partner in the three-legged race, well, you've come to the wrong place; if you want to clean up in Trivial Pursuit, jackpot. That said, I'm not sure either Hawking or Xavier would've drafted Darren McFadden or re-hired Art Shell.

More interesting, perhaps, is that Sapp, once critical of Randy Moss during his two-year stint with the Raiders, has a different perspective on his former teammate:

I suppose it's possible that Lane Kiffin, entering his second year as the Raiders head coach, could be under even more pressure to turn things around in Oakland. Although, I'm not sure it much matters; owner Al Davis has allegedly tried to can Kiffin, even before lavishly spending on free agents this off-season.

Still, the $180 million Davis dropped on new contracts means one thing for Kiffin, at least according to the San Francisco Chronicle's David White:

All the more demand for him to produce an instant winner in his second season, if only because no coach this side of Jon Gruden has gotten a third-year chance in Oakland.

Since Oakland faced Tampa Bay in the Super Bowl in 2002, they've gone through Bill Callahan, Norv Turner and Art Shell. And Kiffin's name would've been added to the list if he didn't stubbornly refuse to resign earlier this off-season.

Regardless, he understands that barring a Patriots-like run, his job is ultimately temporary:

In 1995, when Kellen Winslow Sr. delivered his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction speech, he used it as an opportunity to denounce the NFL's abysmal record of minority hiring. His voice has been an important one, but in a sick irony, a con-man has started impersonating Winslow and sucking African-American coaches into a money-wiring scheme.

From conversations I've had with coaches who say they were bilked, these seem to be low-risk, small payout operations built around a smooth-talking con artist. The plan had to be swiftly executed: find an eager assistant coach looking for that one big break, hook the assistant in emotionally, hastily schedule an interview, get the money, then disappear.

One small-school assistant coach offered details to FanHouse on how the scam was perpetrated on him. "When you're a young unknown coach and Kellen Winslow, Hall of Famer, calls you, you don't ask a lot of questions," said the coach, who asked that his name not be used for this story. "You don't want to blow an opportunity."

Even though the Dolphins won their Super Bowl last week against the Ravens, there's no guarantee first-year head coach Cam Cameron's job is any safer than it was when the team was 0-13.

"[Owner Wayne Huizenga] and I, as well as [GM] Randy [Mueller] ... we'll all sit down and talk about, I'm sure, a lot of those things after the season is over, after we evaluate the work we have to get done.

Huizenga has yet to confirm if Cameron will be back for next season, but you'd have to think the team is leaning towards keeping him. For starters, unless you're Art Shell, it's probably not fair to give a coach one year into the job too much credit or too much blame. There's just not enough to go on.

Second, is there anybody out there better than Cameron? Sure, been-around-the-blockers like Marty Schottenheimer, Jim Fassel and Steve Mariucci are available, as well as up-and-comers Josh McDaniels and Jason Garrett, but are any of these guys upgrades? And won't Miami have to go through another year of adjusting to a new staff, which means more of what we've seen this season?

I'm sure Huizenga reads FanHouse, so I'll add my two cents: keep Cameron for another year, and if it doesn't work out, throw gobs of dough at Bill Cowher and see what happens.

It must be the last month of the regular season because the Raiders are talking about moral victories. The team usually gives up on real wins sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving depending on the coach (last year, it was Labor Day), so it should come as no surprise that only losing by seven points to the defending Super Bowl champs is viewed as a good thing:

[T]he Raiders led into the fourth quarter, and they had a chance to tie the score, and yes, that was a pass interference on fourth down when Kelvin Hayden held Jerry Porter's arm.

But ... the stands were packed and the Raiders went toe-to-toe with the NFL's second-best team. That's a whole lot of achievement. December has been checkout/early holiday planning time for four years in Raiderland, and Lane Kiffin has his team fighting. That has to mean something.

Yeah, it means that Oakland is 4-10 heading into Week 16. Good news: the Raiders have clinched homefield advantage throughout the playoffs in the parallel moral-victories-only NFL. They are 13-1(there's nothing moral about losing the the lowly Lions, even in Week 1, when God still loved Jon Kitna) and are favorites to win the Moral Victory Super Bowl. So there's that.

Seriously, there's no disputing that Kiffin has been good for the Raiders, or at the very least, much better than Art Shell, Norvell Turner, or Bill Callahan. Okay, that's setting the bar ... well, on the ground, but we're talking about the Raiders here. Any progress is a good thing. And if it includes moral victories, all the better.

Earlier this week, ProFootballTalk.com, citing an unnamed source, wrote that Raiders first-year head coach Lane Kiffin wasn't super-psyched about losing out on the Arkansas job to that stiff in Atlanta, Bobby Petrino. According to the source, Kiffin was so miffed, he slammed doors and cursed. What a savage.

Whatever happened behind slammed doors, Kiffin wants you to know that he's not interested in any other job than the one he currently has:

"I never had any contact with the University of Arkansas or any college about any job at all," Kiffin said Wednesday. "I've done nothing but prepare my team for the upcoming game....

When asked if he had any desire to take a college coaching job at any point, Kiffin said: "No, no. I'm coaching the Raiders and getting us ready to play. I don't have any idea where all that information [that he was upset about losing out on the Arkansas job] came from."

So there you have it; mystery solved. Or not.

Who knows how this ends, but there was a sense earlier this season (right around the time the 2-2 Raiders were tied for first place in the division) that the organization was finally reversing the once-thought-to-be irreversible damage done by Bill Callahan, Norv Turner and Art Shell in a five-year period. Now? Well, the Raiders are 4-9 and are in line for another top-10 draft pick. If Kiffin wanted to pull a "Saban" it would be hard to blame him, but he says he's not going anywhere. Of course, we've heard that before.

The Oakland Tribune's Carl Steward thinks it's over in Oakland. We're heading into Week 10, and the Raiders are already mailing it in:

Another halfway point, another pro football season already kaput. ... Lane Kiffin is about to learn what Mike Nolan surely already knows - the driving only gets harder from here. While a percentage of players will always continue to talk about going back to work and correcting the little mistakes that make the difference between victory and defeat, others see the hopelessness of it all and chuck it in.

They don't have to say it. You see it in the empty locker stalls after games. You see it in glazed eyes. You see it in the dejection of players too proud or too injured to get dressed quickly and bolt a bad scene.

That the team made it this far is progress. Last year at this time Oakland was 2-6 under Art Shell ... oh, right, that's the same record they have right now. (And to think, a month ago this team was leading the division at 2-2.)