Gannon on JaMarcus

Per Jerry Mac's Transcript of Rich's appearance this morning on Murph and Mac:

– “The thing that concerns me about (JaMarcus Russell), well a couple of things. First, his growth has been retarded some from the fact that he’s had three different play-callers this year in Lane Kiffin, Greg Knapp and now Tom Cable. I think that was a mistake. I think you can see obviously he’s fallen off in terms of his production and consistency.

“The other thing that concerns me is when the coach comes out and says that the guy needs to . . . come to work every day and do the work it takes to be successful. To me, that’s mind-boggling, how, in this day and age, whether it be a coordinator or a position coach or a head coach, wouldn’t demand that the guy come in on Tuesdays and do the work.

“And then to make the comment a couple of weeks ago, now we’re going to make him learn how to be a pro, well, what were they doing the first year and a half they had him?”

– “If your quarterback is not the hardest working guy in the building, you have a problem. I don’t know that he’s quite there yet, and that’s not a shot at him. I think you learn to do that, you learn to be that type of guy. If you’re not the first one in and the last to leave, as an owner, or as a head coach or as a play-caller, I’d be very concerned.”

I don't remember the comments about Jammy needing to "come to work every day and do the work it takes to be successful. Unless he's talking about missing the meeting with Collinsworth and the NFL Network.

I remember before Norv was fired thinking Gannon might make a good head coach. Kerry Collins had his best games with Gannon talking into his headset. Or maybe he could be that "bridge" that was talked, that I thought T. Brown might be good at.

Growth?

Kawakami has an excellent column this morning, asking if Al and the Raiders will learn from this mistake.

It's important to remember that Lance Kiffin wasn't exactly qualified for this position when he got it. Everybody else, from Bernard Petrino to Mike Martz to Dan and I were interviewed for this job, and while not all of us were offered the job, we all took ourselves out of the running for various reasons. But once Lane got here, I thought he did a pretty good job of trying to change the culture of the locker room. And according to Steve Corkran on KNBR the other day, all of this started when Lane fired Rob Ryan in January. Ryan went upstairs to say "Peace Out" to Al, and Al said, "Let's not start sucking each other's dicks just quite yet, Lance doesn't have hiring and firing power." (These are not verbatim quotes. Listen to the podcast.) Al wrote up a letter of resignation, said "Sign it, you little punk." "Fire me."

Anyway, at this point, Lane has to go. He just has to be fired. The Raiders, instead of acting like a merely incompetent organization and just firing their coach, are passing around notes saying their coach is a bad kid. This is ridiculous. I don't even remember the Bengals doing shit like this. The Clippers never acted this way. The closest thing I can think of is the maybe the way Steinbrenner treated Dave Winfield by paying a mafia gambler for dirt on him. But he was a player.

Getting back to Kawakami's column, I think the answer to the question "Will Al/Raiders learn anything?" is no. Sadly, depressingly, hilariously, no.