32-17

Last night's preseason win over the Bears has me feeling pretty good about the Raiders. Main observations:

• The pass rush and defensive front looks incredible
• O-line - not bad
• Wide receivers - we still need help here

If Kamerion Wimbley plays anything like he did last night during the regular season, the Raiders are in excellent shape. Four sacks in the first half. The whole D-line looked great, with Tommy Kelly in on the action as well. The complete revamp of the LB corps looks outstanding right now, and moving up Trevor Scott and Wimbley to rush the passer in nickel situations is paying off. McClain can tackle. Sure, he overran the play that looked disturbingly similar to last year's run defense (Forte for 89 yards), but when he hits guys, they go down.

The O line is a big question mark, but looked pretty solid against some good players on the Bears. One of my favorite plays of the game came in the second quarter when Henderson stood up Julius Peppers in a 1-on-1 situation, then Gallery came over to help and put him on the ground, hard. Despite a couple of dumb penalties on the opening drive - which the Raiders overcame, a great sign in itself - Gallery looks terrific.

As for the wide receivers, it's a good thing we have Louis Murphy. No one else looked good. Even JLH, who had a nice catch, still looks a bit lost out there. Hopefully Schilens and DHB are not really hurt and we're just saving them for the regular season. Otherwise Zach Miller will be way overworked. It looked to me last night like Campbell was skipping an open Zach on several plays to try and get the ball to WRs. At least I hope that's the case...

So far this year my least favorite guy is #23, Jeremy Ware. He seems to have that rare blend of overconfidence and incompetence that leads to fourth down TD passes like the Bears' second score.

Of note, Bo Jackson was at the game last night and he told Greg Papa that his best ever 40 time was a 4.14. He looked even faster than that with pads on.

Overall, relatively dominant game by the Raiders. Jerry points out the success they had with the screen play on offense. That was another good thing to see.

GRIND IT

We are running both Bush and the clock here in the fourth quarter. A lot of runs to the right side, but on this last one it was a cut-back behind Gallery who swept his man almost to the sideline. Cable has got to be loving this.

Now we have Bush taking a seat to injury, but come on...Fargas and McFadden are dying to get back in there.

But it's Bush who returns. Let's run the clock and cap it with a TD!

Perspective

My good friend Charity traveled back from visiting family in Michigan for Christmas and brought me a copy of the Detroit Free Press. On the front page of the sports section, columnist Michael Rosenberg is busily tracking the Lions' "Road to XVI" losses. His only partly sarcastic Christmas installment? "Oh, for the glory days of Fontes."

Ouch.

Thankfully, the Raider glory days were actually glorious - and some of them occurred recently enough to remember. In recent years, things often have been more spectacularly bad, but at least there are seemingly promising moments to give us false hope. One such moment came this past Sunday during perhaps the Raiders' finest effort of the 2008 season.

There are poetic possibilities this week. Back-to-back wins to head into the offseason. A changing of the guard with young team leaders emerging all over the offense. JaMarcus figuratively stepping up in the pocket to begin to avoid the oncoming rush of "bust" tags. Gruden. Kiffin. Memories of Super Bowl XXXVII.

Despite being probably the only NFL franchise with a team poem, the Raiders have offered anything but poetic results in recent years. Odds are, the Houston game was nothing but another head fake from a team still looking for its nadir.

But at least Sunday's game is worth watching, and Johnny and I plan to give it the live blog treatment. As a Christmas present, Jerry does nice job of outlining the positives with today's Raiders. I think the Gallery comment was about the nicest to read.

It could be worse.