NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.

Darren McFadden - NFL football’s newest multi-millionaire

Image details: 2008 NFL PLAYERS Rookie Premiere Photo Shoot served by picapp.com

Darren McFadden learned from JaMarcus Russell. Do not go for the contract holdout. Go for the contract and get into camp.

Now McFadden can go about preparing for his rookie season knowing he won’t miss a day of training camp. He has already impressed coach Lane Kiffin with his quick grasp of the offense after just a few weeks of offseason workouts.

Kiffin said getting the deal done early will help ensure that the Raiders can capitalize on McFadden’s versatility as early as this season. In this week’s minicamp, McFadden was used in a variety of situations, including lining up wide as a receiver.

“The last thing we wanted to do with Darren because of our ideas with him was to go into a holdout and for him to miss any time in training camp,” Kiffin said. “What I think shows a lot about Darren is the fact that Darren felt the same as we did. Darren knew how important it was for him to get in here and show us his love for football.”
source

Coach Lane Kiffen is putting a lot of stock in McFadden.

The Raiders hope McFadden can be an immediate contributor after the club dumped veteran running back Dominic Rhodes and entertained trade offers for fellow veteran LaMont Jordan, who probably will be released later. Starter Justin Fargas and promising youngster Michael Bush also will be in Oakland’s backfield.

Oakland may not win a lot, but should be tons of fun with young JaMarcus Russell at quarterback and Darren McFadden at running back.

Be sure to check out my companion blog at NBA Obsessed.

As always, any NFL Football related comments are welcome.

More blogs about football.

NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.

Darren McFadden is learning how to hold the ball. Well, maybe not in this picture.

Image details: Oakland Raiders Rookie Mini Camp served by picapp.com

He is big. He is strong and he runs a 4.3. A legitimate 4.3. He is Darren McFadden, the top rated running back out of the draft.

Oakland needs him badly. They need excitement. They need Darren.

Last year they drafted JaMarcus Russell number one in the draft and he sat for most of the season with contract problems. Here is a guy that threw the ball 60 yards while on his knees. He has all the properties of a great quarterback.

Throw in Lane Kiffen, a coach that somehow has the ear of Al Davis as well as his confidence and Oakland fans have to be drooling.

Will they win a lot of games this year? Probably not.

Will they have a lot of highlights this year. It sure looks like it.

Start with Darren McFadden. Everyone is comparing him to Adrian Peterson. That is a lot to put on a rookie. Hey, Darren, go out and be as good as Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings. All he did was break the single game rushing record and look like the best back since Barry Sanders played in this league.

Right now Oakland is being a bit more cautious and working on fundamentals.

But coach Lane Kiffin cautions about putting too much pressure on McFadden so early.

“He’s not here to save the franchise. He just happens to be our first pick of the draft,” Kiffin said.

One of the immediate priorities is working on McFadden’s ball security. He fumbled 15 times last season at Arkansas, although some of those came as a quarterback or kick returner as opposed to a tailback.

Rathman pointed out that McFadden carried held his elbow too far from his body when they first met before the draft last month and is working on fixing the flaw before the season.

“You’ve got to be a good fundamental football player, and that’s what we’re working on right now,” Rathman said. “Obviously, coming out of college his biggest negative was probably his ball security, so we’ve jumped on that early. He understands where we’re coming from. He’s using better technique, better decision on where he’s putting the ball at certain times. So he understands what he needs to do.”
source

At some point, the season starts and Darren McFadden gets revved up and the Oakland fans will go wild.

Be sure to check out my companion blog at NBA Obsessed.

As always, any NFL Football related comments are welcome.

More blogs about football.

NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.

DeAngelo Hall - Hey, check out my Michael Vick poster

This is the report.

The Raiders and DeAngelo Hall agreed to terms Thursday on a $70 million, seven-year contract that cleared the way for the former Pro Bowl cornerback to be dealt from Atlanta to Oakland.

Hall arrived in the Bay Area to meet with Raiders owner Al Davis, coach Lane Kiffin and other team officials Wednesday and the deal was completed the following day. Hall will be guaranteed a little more than $24 million in the new deal, a person familiar with the contract said on condition of anonymity because terms were not released.

source

This is the question.

Why?

Your team is light years from winning.

Why lock up so much money in a veteran cornerback?

It gets worse. Here are the terms.

The Raiders wanted to sign Hall to a new contract before completing the deal with the Falcons in order to make sure they would have Hall for more than one year. Oakland sent a second-round pick, the 34th overall, in next month’s draft, and a fifth-round pick in 2009 to Atlanta in the deal.

Think that is bad? It gets worse.

Oakland has only one pick in the first four rounds of the draft, the fourth overall selection in the opening round. The Raiders previously traded their third-round pick to New England for the pick used to select offensive lineman Mario Henderson in last year’s draft, and its fifth-round pick to Denver for defensive tackle Gerard Warren.

Sure going to do a lot of building with that lone 4th round pick.

DeAngelo is going into his fifth season and has 17 picks in his career. He does add a certain amount of toughness to Oakland’s team, but other teams will just throw away from him.

You lost Sapp. You need a defensive end. You need a tackle and maybe a guard.

Don’t know, this free agent signing just seems to put a lot of your money into an emotionally volatile corner.

Wonder how DeAngelo will handle all the losing. Oh, that is right, he came from the Falcons.

NFL Football Fan Question Well, Raider nation, was it a good deal or not?

Be sure to check out my companion blog at NBA Obsessed.

As always, any NFL Football related comments are welcome.

More blogs about football.

NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.

JaMarcus Russell has all the tools and now all the money to go with it!

Evidently when you are wanted you are wanted.

What a joke. Without even playing a single down in the NFL, JaMarcus Russell will walk off with a fortune.

Who does he think he is, Tiger Woods?

Without making 1 touchdown pass or proving he can win, JaMarcus Russell will sign an unbelievable record rookie contract.

Who does he think he is, LeBron James?

The final contract needs to be approved by the NFL, but it will be worth Read more

Share and Enjoy:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.

JaMarcus Russell is passing on his current contract offer

JaMarcus Russell is a Raider or technically he is not a Raider, because the contract remains unsigned. This is August.

Now your intrepid author realizes that you know what month it is, but the emphasis is on how late it is to sign a contract for a number 1 pick.
Read more

NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.

Big Ben Davidson and the handle bar mustache were way ahead of their time (way ahead)

Can all this work out in such a way that the glory days will return?

In your intrepid author’s youth, there was a Raider QB by the name of Daryle Lamonica.

He was known as the Mad Bomber!

Daryle had a favorite receiver named Fred Biletnikoff.

All they did was name an annual award after Fred. He had hands like glue.

The Mad Bomber loved to throw down field, but on third and 7, you knew it was going to Biletnikoff. Fred would run a picture perfect out route and Lamonica would fire it in there. It seems like Biletnikoff caught all of them.

The Raiders had players like Pete Banaszak at running back, George Blanda at backup QB and kicker, Big Ben Davidson at defensive end, and the 1959 Heisman winner Billy Cannon. Read more

NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.

Gaines brings it with speed and speed kills!

This could turn out to be one of the most entertaining drafts in a long long time.

Why, you ask?

Because the top 7 or 8 teams need all top ten rated players. Some worse than others.

Can you honestly say that Oakland, Detroit, Cleveland, Tampa, Arizona, Washington, Minnesota, Atlanta, Miami, and Houston don’t need pretty much everything?

Wow, was that some kind of double single negative? But you get the picture and it isn’t pretty.

Oakland has… Read more

NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.

Sit down with Brady Quinn and be a drafting expert!

Make sure you are sitting down.

If you are driving in a car, then maybe the seatbelt should be on.

What the heck are you doing reading this in a moving car? Are you Millen or something?

Squibster dictionary - Millen
1. To be daft or otherwise not with it.
2. to continuously draft wide receivers.
3. To be a GM with a football team with a name like Lions and have an anti prodigious record.

Let’s not take an Al Davis on this draft, rather let’s take a group approach.

Squibster dictionary - Al Davis… Read more

NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.

Brady says - You need me more than you think. If you can actually think.

We laugh about it. We joke about it. We even wonder about it, but how can the Raiders, Lions, and Browns be so pathetic?

Just today, two people passed my cubicle and one said, “Is he still alive?”

The other one said, “Yeah, maybe we ought to up his dosage.”

No, wait a minute, didn’t mean to mention that.

Another group went by, going on and on about how stupid bad teams are at drafting. If they get burned once, they get major gun shy.

Pat Kirwan at NFL.com has tried… Read more

NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.

Will he bomb out or throw the bomb?

Nobody said the draft is an exact science.

Go back and review your favorite team’s drafts in the recent past and you will see a lot of “who is that guy” picks that never made it.

It gets even harder at quarterback.

Oddly enough it is even hard if the quarterback being drafted is taken on the 1st pick of the draft.

Some say it is 50 - 50, that the first quarterback in the draft will fail.

The big problem with that logic… Read more