Part of the Bay Area News Group

Raiders work out linebackers

By Steve Corkran
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 at 4:13 pm in Oakland Raiders

The Raiders worked out linebacker Kevin Malast on Tuesday, according to his agent, as well as linebacker Prescott Burgess, according to Aaron Wilson of Scout.com.
Malast, 25, has not appeared in any regular-season games since he joined the NFL out of Rutgers in 2009. He has spent time with the Chicago Bears and Tennessee Titans.
Malast, 25, is 6-feet-2 and 235 pounds. The Raiders are thin at linebacker in light of Ricky Brown being placed on injured reserve Saturday and starting middle linebacker Rolando McClain suffering an ankle injury Sunday against the Houston Texans.
Malast was released by the Titans in late August, and he has not been with a team ever since. He spent five weeks on the Bears practice squad in 2009.
Burgess, 27, has appeared in 38 games during his five NFL seasons, none as a starter. He has played for the Baltimore Ravens and New England Patriots, including one game for the Ravens this season.

Follow me on Twitter: @corkonthenfl

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Davis tribute Sunday _ and it could be full house

By Jerry McDonald - NFL Writer
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 at 3:08 pm in Oakland Raiders

The Raiders’ game Sunday against the Cleveland Browns will include tributes to owner Al Davis throughout the game, according to CEO Amy Trask, and the club moved toward ensuring a full stadium with complimentary tickets given to season-ticket holders.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Raiders live chat today at noon

By Jon Becker
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 at 8:52 am in Oakland Raiders

In the aftermath of arguably the most emotional weekend in Raiders history after the passing of Al Davis, please join us for an Inside the Raiders live chat today at noon as Jerry McDonald steps in for Steve Corkran today.

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Bill Soliday on Al Davis

By Jerry McDonald - NFL Writer
Monday, October 10th, 2011 at 8:58 pm in Oakland Raiders

With all that has been written about Al Davis the last few days, maybe you missed this one.
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Coach Hue Jackson talks about Raiders past, present, future

By Steve Corkran
Monday, October 10th, 2011 at 7:00 pm in Oakland Raiders

Raiders coach Hue Jackson spoke at length about how the organization is going to move forward on the heels of managing general partner Al Davis passing away Saturday. Read the rest of this entry »

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Players show up to talk about victory, Al Davis and fans

By Steve Corkran
Monday, October 10th, 2011 at 12:24 pm in Oakland Raiders

Coach Hue Jackson gave his players “victory Monday” for their effort in a come-from-behind, 25-20 victory over the Houston Texans on Sunday. Even so, several players showed up anyway to talk about the events from the weekend. Read the rest of this entry »

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John Madden finally speaks about passing of Al Davis

By Steve Corkran
Monday, October 10th, 2011 at 10:25 am in Oakland Raiders

Former Raiders head coach John Madden wasn’t heard from in the immediate wake of the passing of Raiders managing general partner Al Davis on Saturday.
Word was that Madden just wasn’t ready to speak about the passing of the man who hired him to be his head coach in 1969 and remained a close friend all these years. Madden regularly attended games and sat with Davis in the owner’s suite.
On Monday morning, Madden spoke briefly on 740-AM KCBS radio about his recollections of Davis as a person and owner.
Here is the entirety of what Madden said, courtesy of KCBS:

Madden: “There’s part of you that says, you know that he’s going to die, but there’s another part that says, Al Davis will never die. It’s Al Davis. Then, you think that he’s sick, he’s not doing well, but he’s a fighter, he’ll fight this, and he’s going to win. Then, you hear the call and you say, well, you shouldn’t be shocked. But it was very, very shocking. I still am. If you really knew him and you were a part of him, he was the most loyal friend or person that you could have. And then there was a lot of people that he didn’t know. Well, of course, he couldn’t be loyal to them. Like I said, Al Davis isn’t for everyone. Everyone’s not going to say that Al Davis is this or that, that he’s perfect, and he’s all these things. But if he’s your friend, if you played for him, if you coached for him, if you were part of the NFL, he was that guy. And there was no one that could be better at being that guy than Al Davis. He stood up for what he believed and he stood up for what he thought was right, not only for him but for other people.”

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Jackson’s post-game speech video

By Jerry McDonald - NFL Writer
Sunday, October 9th, 2011 at 9:34 pm in Oakland Raiders

Here’s a link to a video of Raiders coach Hue Jackson talking to his team following a 25-20 win over the Houston Texans Sunday, courtesy of Raiders.com.

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Parcells, Tom Jackson, Ditka and Steve Young on Al Davis

By Steve Corkran
Sunday, October 9th, 2011 at 3:41 pm in Oakland Raiders

Here are some exceprts from ESPN about the recollections of Bill Parcells, Mike Ditka, Tom Jackson and Steve Young about Raiders managing general partner Al Davis:

Bill Parcells: “I was still playing college football and I met him (Al Davis) in 1963 in Corpus Christi, Texas. He was the coach of the team. It was one of these games that you got paid $600 if you won the game and $400 if you lost. During the course of the week, I was able to spend time with him in the lobby of the hotel at night talking football. He was kind of surprised that I was interested in learning what he knew at that age. Unfortunately, during the week, I broke my hand in three places on a Wednesday. Of course there are no replacements available in those all-star games. So he said – ‘Are you going to play or not?’ I said, ‘Yea, I’m going to play.’ Strangely enough, after the game, he came up to me and he handed me an extra $200 and he said, ‘Thanks a lot.’ That was the beginning of a 48 year friendship that existed until this week.”

… more Parcells: “My first year as a head coach with the Giants. My job was in question, it was being threatened. Job security wasn’t good. He was able to give me a perspective of the general manager and the owner that I, as a young coach, didn’t have. The advice he gave me, and I’ve passed this on to countless numbers of people in this profession, ‘Just do your job. It is the only thing that you can control. Just do your job.’”

Tom Jackson: “When I finished playing professional football, one of my first assignments the next year as training camp started was to go to Raiders camp and cover it. I get out there, and the night before, about 11 o’clock, I get a call from the Raider organization saying, ‘You can’t come out here and cover the team tomorrow.’ And I was like ‘Why?’ They go, because Al (Davis) is not comfortable with you seeing the Raiders practice having been a Denver Bronco for so long.

“I decided to take the camera crew out there anyway. The next day, I’m literally sitting on the curb with the camera crew and Al comes through and he calls me over and he goes, ‘Come on over son.’ He put his arm around me and he goes, ‘I don’t want you to feel real bad. You’ve just been a Bronco for 14 years. I’m just not comfortable with you seeing a Raiders practice.’

“I said, ‘Al, I will never take information from the Raiders and take it back to the Denver Broncos. It will ruin my career in TV.’

“He goes, ‘Well, if you were a Raider and you had a chance to see a Bronco practice and find out some things. I’d expect you to come back and tell me everything you know.’

ESPN’s Steve Young: “Passion for football was different with Al Davis than other people in the league. You thought, ‘Oh, everyone has passion.’ He had it, kind of heightened, in a bigger way. So whenever you’re around him, I’d run into him in the stadiums, on the field, or when we played him, you just had a sense that he loved football more than anybody else. That’s what I’ll miss, that guy you can point to and say – ‘That man loves the game and has proven it over many many years.’”

Al Davis’ Legacy:
Mike Ditka: “His greatest legacy, to me, is the loyalty of his former players to that organization – what they think about what he created.

Jackson: “His legacy to me is tied to the history of the NFL. That’s what it is. When you look at him as AFL commissioner, when you look at the league merging, when you look at the game the way it is today. That really is his true legacy.

“When I was in Denver, and I was his enemy, it was his loyalty to the Raiders. He loved that football team, in every way. He bled silver and black.”

Parcells: “I spent countless of thousands of hours with this man, either at the combine, or the owners’ meetings and Super Bowls, or when he’d come to New York City, he’d call me, I’ll go to New York and see him, visit with him at the hotel, walk around with him.

“For all of those of us who really aspire to be anything in this business, this was a great mentor because he could give me a perspective on just about every aspect of the game I couldn’t get anywhere else. He acted in an advisory capacity for me for 48 years. I want to tell you he was truly a remarkable human being. I really had a strong personal affection for this man.”

Chris Berman: “He’s like a rare newspaper editor … He’s the guy that did every job in the football business.

“I just want to share this because I don’t have the time that you do. It was about this time last year … I got about four messages on every phone possible – ‘Mr. Davis is looking for you.’ That’s odd. Al Davis calling me, for what? He wanted to thank me and our network personally for the way we handled the passing of George Blanda. We had a beautiful 20-minute conversation – that was him.”

Parcells: “He was a caring guy Chris, he really was.”

Jackson: “I want to share this because it’s important to me. With all the things that happened between me and the Raiders … One of the times he (Davis) was inducting one of his Raiders and we were at the Canton airport getting ready to take off.

“We started a conversation. He looked at me and he said, ‘You know, you’d have made a good Raider.’ Even though there’s all that animosity between myself and that organization, and you bleed your colors back then, that just meant a lot to me coming from him.”

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Raiders in position to get to 6-2 at midway point

By Steve Corkran
Sunday, October 9th, 2011 at 2:34 pm in Oakland Raiders

The Raiders beat the Houston Texans today 25-20 in a game that wasn’t decided until free safety Michael Huff intercepted a pass in the end zone with no time remaining. Three weeks from now, they likely will be looking upon this victory as the one that kick-started their season.
In beating the Texans for only the second time ever, the Raiders improved to 3-2, with home games against the Cleveland Browns, Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs coming up.
It’s not a stretch to envision the Raiders reaching the midpoint of the season at 6-2. That wouldn’t ensure them anything other than momentum heading into the second half of the season, which would be huge because they have games against the Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions and two against the Chargers.
At this point, it appears as if the two Chargers game will go a long way toward deciding which team wins the AFC West and gets an automatic playoff berth.
The Raiders swept the Chargers last season, so they have to feel good about their chances this season. At the same time, they can’t get ahead of themselves.

HUFF COMES UP HUGE
Huff was fired up about returning to action after missing the Patriots game. He had added motivation in returning for a game in his native state.
As it turned out, Huff made the two key plays down the stretch. Before his interception, he sniffed out a screen, which forced quarterback Matt Schaub to pull down the ball and get sacked by Richard Seymour.
Huff appeared in 83 straight games before an ankle injury forced him to the sideline against the Patriots. Needless to say, the Raiders are thrilled to have him back in the lineup.

PENALTIES STILL AN ISSUE
Try though he may, Raiders coach Hue Jackson can’t seem to get a handle on the penalties issue that continues to plague his troops.
He thought things were headed in the proper direction, when the Raiders went from 15 penalties in the opener, to eight against the Buffalo Bills and seven against the New York Jets. Now, they are headed the wrong way once again.
The Raiders committed nine against the New England Patriots and 11 for 89 yards today. That ups their league-leading totals to 50 for 457 yards, an average of 10 per game for 91.4 yards.

THROW YOUR HANDS UP
A large part of Oakland’s success against the Texans today owes to its defenders getting their hands into the air and in line with Schaub’s throws.
Seven times, the Raiders got a hand on Schaub’s passes. One of them resulted in an interception by defensive end Lamarr Houston and, ultimately, Sebastian Janikowski’s first field goal.

JANIKOWSKI THE DIFFERENCE
Janikowski coverted all four of his field-goal attempts today. Three of them came from at least 50 yards, including 54- ad 55-yarders.
This marks the first time in Janikowski’s 12-year NFL career that he converted three field goals of 50 yards or longer in one game.
He proved to be the difference. Texans kicker Neil Rackers missed wide left from 41 yards, and Texans coach Gary Kubiak passed on a long field-goal attempt in lieu of a punt at one point in the game.
Janikowski has missed only one field-goal attempt this season and, perhaps, is in the midst of his best season.

RUN DEFENSE SHOWS UP
All week long, Jackson, defensive coordinator Chuck Bresnahan and the players insisted that the Raiders have the players to be successful against the run.
That seemed like a hard sell, when seeing how the Raiders allowed a league-worst 5.9 yard per carry the first four games.
On Sunday, the Raiders held the Texans to an average of 2.8 yards per carry and only 70 yards overall. That second figure is slightly more than half of the 136 yards the Raiders allowed their first four games.
Twenty of those 70 yards came on Arian Foster’s first rush. The Texans managed only 50 yards on their 24 other carries, or 2.1 per pop.

HEYWARD-BEY MAKING NOISE
Third-year wide receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey entered Sunday’s game fresh from a career-high 115 yards against the Patriots. Against the Texans, the much-maligned receiver turned in a career-best seven receptions for 99 yards and a touchdown.
He now leads all Raiders wide receivers with 16 catches for 263 yards through five games.
Fellow wide receiver Chaz Schilens caught a pass for a touchdown today, as well, giving him his first score this season.

JACKSON GETS EMOTIONAL
As soon as the game ended, Jackson dropped to one knee, covered his eyes and started bawling, no doubt the emotions of managing general partner Al Davis passing away a day earlier hitting him full force.
Davis hired Jackson in 2010 as his offensive coordinator. He promoted Jackson to coach in January, soon after he fired Tom Cable.
Jackson did an impressive job keeping his composure Saturday during interviews about Davis’ passing, as well as throughout the game. In the end, even he couldn’t contain his emotions.

Follow me on Twitter: @corkonthenfl

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