Raiders And New GM McKenzie Pick Where They're Supposed To

Photo Lee Kirby / US Presswire

I know that Raider fans wants to make a tremendous
amount of Reggie McKenzie's eye for talent and how
upset they were that they didn't have a 1st or 2nd
round pick in this years draft, but I contend that
drafting their first pick in the 3rd round is right
where they and their new GM belong.

For starters, their 1st round pick is Carson Palmer,
and love him or hate him, I'll take an established
player over a potential one in the draft any day of
the week. With Palmer. good, bad, or otherwise you
know what you have, and since he's your starting QB,
that's has to be pretty good. I won't list the
number of picks that have gone in the top 10 of past
drafts that have failed to produce anything, but if
I did, you could fill a nobody's nobody list of no-
stars that would require much more writing than you
may be willing to read or even recognize.

Secondly, as a life long Raider fan, and even more
so, a life long Al Davis fan I feel comfortable in
saying that his shoes will not only be hard to fill,
but even harder to try on. Davis won FOUR titles in
fifty years (1 AFL Championship, and 3 Super Bowls),
though it wouldn't be fair to McKenzie to hold him
up to those standards, he has won nothing as a head
man. You wanna make the case that he has TWO rings
as a member of the Packers front office, great.
He wasn't the GM for the first(Ron Wolfe), and was
not for the second(Ted Thompson) either. Yes it's
a team, but it's like giving Dan Pastorini credit
for the Super XV title, a bit of an exaggeration, I
know, but you get the idea.

Reggie McKenzie should make a fine GM, but he has
never truly been one before, so it remains to be
seen. Any Raider fan reading this article knows
that winning in the NFL isn't easy, that's why the
Raiders haven't done it for a while. More teams,
more competition, more cheating (See the Saints &
Patriots), and a constantly changing landscape to
any system you think figured it out for you.
The case was always made that Al meddled too much,
well if he had the last time they went to the Super
Bowl, they might have won, but Bill Callahan didn't
have the luxury of Al's meddling or he would have
realized that the former head coach was on the other
sideline with the opponent for that title game.

There are very, very few that can stand shoulder to
shoulder with AL Davis career wise, and Reggie will
be hard pressed to do that. Starting his draft off
in the 3rd round this year, and the 2nd next year,
is probably the best way to gently walk in the shoes
of a man who not only wore them, but designed, and
made them. If Reggie McKenzie truly has an eye for
talent, then he can find it anywhere, NFL history is
littered with late round draft choices from rounds
that don't even exist anymore. So why should today
be any different? Any Raider fan who has a long
history with Al Davis will want to see him earn his
stripes, I do.

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