Brian Spurlock-US PRESSWIRE

Never has a scouting department been under such pressure. If you’re evaluating talent for the Oakland Raiders at the combine in Indianapolis then chances are you’ve got one eye on the field and the other over your shoulder. Among the few staffers that were able to retain their jobs under the Reggie McKenzie regime the scouting department knows they’re auditioning to keep those checks coming.

When McKenzie took over it made sense to start fresh so most everyone he didn’t hire be fired, let go or simply allowed to walk free. Keeping the scouts around boiled down to all the work they’d done during the season. Starting from scratch with a new coaching staff is made easier due to the off-season. With an entire scouting department you’re talking about losing valuable time with hirings and firings mere weeks before the combine begins.

As if the task of doing enough to keep your job weren’t a heavy enough burden to bury, how’d you like to be looking for talent knowing you’ve got next to nothing in terms of draft picks?

With just two late rounds picks currently at their disposal the Raiders need to make sure they look over every player possible in order to find some forgotten gems in the draft. As it stands the Raiders have pretty much pulled a Mike Ditka by trading away most all of their 2012 draft. The losses of Nnamdi Asomugha, Zach Miller and Robert Gallery will yield compensatory picks but none of those will be valued any higher than a late third-round pick. Combine those with the 5^th and 6^th rounders the Raiders are currently sitting on and you’ve got yourself the essence of scouting.

Anybody that watched college football or opens their ears to the plethora of draft gurus out there knows Andrew Luck, Robert Griffith III, Trent Richardson, Justin Blackmon, blah, blah, blah. For the teams looking to draft these men it’s a matter of kicking the tires.

For the Raiders they’ve got some test driving to do. Not only do they need to find talent but they’ll need talent that can contribute immediately. McKenzie’s mission is to rid the franchise of some “out of whack” contracts. Stanford Routt was the first to fall under that sword. No matter who is next they’ll free some cash but will also leave holes on the roster.

Routt might not have been the best corner on the planet but replacing him will take a more inspired pick than DeMarcus Van Dyke or Chimdi Chekwa. Last year Al Davis tried to fill the void of the departing Asomugha with two rookies that showed some real potential but never contributed in a meaningful way.

With all that you can see why this year at the combine will require more than the usual stopwatch. This time around the Raiders can’t rely on physical ability alone. The Al Davis doctrine of drafting athletes and molding them into football players is gone for the time being. These days ‘potential’ is a dirty word in the East Bay. What the Raiders will need from their draft class next season is what they got from Stefen Wisniewski last season. Finding a first year player who steps in and plays like a seasoned vet is rare but not impossible. Here’s hoping the scouting department in Oakland can make that miracle happen again but this time with limited draft picks. Not only are the prospects of improving on last season riding on it so too are the jobs of the scouts.

Six years of miserable football boiled down to 10 horrible moments

Since that tragic loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl XXXVII, the Oakland Raiders have been a franchise in free fall.

In the six seasons since Chucky exacted his revenge on Al Davis, the Raiders have won just 24 games while losing 72 contests along the way.

Here are the 10 worst moments of those last six years.

Huff's reign was short lived

10. Drafting Michael Huff –While the jury is still out on JaMarcus Russell, Darren McFadden and now Darrius Heyward-Bey, it would appear that the ruling on Michael Huff is a unanimous choice to give his Raider career the death penalty. Huff Daddy was the 7^th pick in the 2006 draft, a draft that might go down as the biggest collection of busts this side of Dolly Parton and a pre-op Soliel Moon Frye. After being benched halfway through his third year in the NFL, the Raiders drafted a virtual unknown safety by the name of Michael Mitchell to replace him. Huff has recorded just one interception, one sack and one safety in 39 career starts.

9. Joe Flacco’s Demolition of Oakland – In week 8 of the 2008 season, the Baltimore Ravens took apart the Raiders to the tune of 29-10. That afternoon, the Raider defense made rookie Joe Flacco look like Joe Montana. Flacco threw a 70-yard TD in the first quarter, ran for a TD from 12 yards out in the fourth quarter and to add insult to injury, Flacco burned linebacker Ricky Brown for a 43-yard reception as well.

8. The 2008 Raider Free Agency Class – Few franchises have shown such poor personnel decisions in a decade as the Raiders did in just one summer. Last year, Al Davis committed $70 million to DeAngelo Hall, $55 million to Javon Walker, $39 million to Gibril Wilson and $16 million to Kwame Harris. Hall played opposite Nnamdi Asomugha and got undressed more often than Vida Guerra. The Raiders severed ties with MeAngelo just 8 games into a 7-year deal. Wilson and Harris were both let go just one year after signing multiyear contracts. Meanwhile, Walker caught a grand total of 15 passes in ’08 then needed season ending ankle surgery and is now attempting to comeback from a secret knee surgery he had during the offseason.

Janikowski runs like a three legged bear

7. Sebastian Janikowski’s Fake Field Goal – If you met Sebastian Janikowski on the street, you most likely would think he’s either a construction worker or a bouncer for a Ukrainian night club. As Tom Cable learned the hard way, it just won’t end well when you try to give the ball to a 260 pound kicker who runs a 7.5 second 40-yard dash. A winnable game against the Kansas City Chiefs became a 20-13 loss thanks in large part to Cable’s gutsy yet misguided effort to fool everyone in the stadium including his own team.

6. Tyler Brayton knees Jeremy Stevens in the “man region” – Losing 16-0 on Monday Night Football and allowing 9 sacks is embarrassing. Losing your cool and kneeing an opponent in the package – even if that opponent is as dirty as Borat’s bed sheets – is reason to stop watching football all together. It still amazes me that the Raiders won two games in 2006. That ’06 team will forever be remembered as the worst offense in NFL history and for Tyler Brayton giving Seahawk tight end Jeremy Stevens a friendly reminder of where the Raider stereotypes come from.

5. Opening Night Losses on National Television – The start of each season brings the hope of a new day. If you’re a Raider fan, the start of each of the last six seasons has been a reminder of just how much liquor you’ll need to make it to the New Year. Twice in the last three years the Raiders have opened the season in primetime on Monday Night and they’ve lost those two games by a combined score of 68-14. The Chargers rolled the Raiders in a Monday Night sack fest in 2006 to the tune of 27-0. Then Jay Cutler, rookie Eddie Royal and every player in a Bronco jersey picked on DeAngelo Hall in route to a 41-14 loss on the ’08 Monday Night debacle. History is against us, but the Raiders and Chargers will again be on Monday Night to open the 2009 season. Let’s hope that Tom Cable plants a few land mines on the Charger sideline for that night.

Art Shell: The look of futility

4. Rehiring Art Shell – Al Davis had an Uncle Rico moment in 2006 when he tried to relive his football past. Davis turned back the clock to 1990 and rehired Art Shell. Shell’s stoic sideline glare became the face of ineptitude. As if the Art Shell move wasn’t bad enough, the Raiders topped themselves by resurrecting the career of offensive coordinator Tom Walsh. Walsh was out of pro football for more than a decade and had been running a bed and breakfast in Idaho. Walsh’s dubious contribution to the NFL record books was to place Randy Moss in the annals as having played for not only the highest scoring offenses in football history but also as a member of one of the worst ever. Walsh’s offense tallied just 168 points in 2006, an average of 10.5 per game. If history holds to form, expect to see a Mike White rehiring in 2011.

3.  Trading Randy Moss to the Patriots – The Randy Moss era in Oakland will go down as one of the worst marriages in pro sports since Mike Ditka took the plunge with Ricky Williams. By the time the Raiders were ready to move Moss, his value had fallen so far that the Patriots were the only team willing to give up anything higher than a 5^th round pick. The Raiders got a fourth round pick and the Pats got a nearly perfect season out of the deal. While the arrogance of the Hoddie was squashed by an epic failure in the Super Bowl loss to the Giants, the Raiders cannot be excused from getting nothing out of the most dangerous weapon in the modern game. Moss has played for the highest scoring offenses in NFL history yet was only good for 6 wins in two years in the East Bay.

2. Brett Favre’s Defining Moment – Brett Favre will be remembered for many things. Among the Favre memories are his myopic attempts to stay in the spotlight and his destruction of the Oakland Raiders only one day after the passing of his father. Favre gave John Madden a Viagra free night on the evening of December 22^nd, 2003, by torching the Raiders with 4 first half TD passes in route to a 41-7 spanking on Monday Night. For the rest of the world it was heart warming and inspiring. For Raider Nation, it was sickening and painful.

The symbol of Raider football since 2003

1. The Painful End to Rich Gannon’s Career – Gannon was the last great offensive player to wear Silver and Black. He was a dedicated leader with a tireless work ethic and a hunger for perfection. The journeymen QB would lead the Raiders to three consecutive AFC West titles, a birth in the Super Bowl and was named the NFL’s most valuable player in 2002. As fate would have it, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Jon Gruden were responsible for the decline of the Raider franchise in more ways than one. Gruden’s squad gave Gannon the two worst moments of his career in both the Super Bowl loss and the injury that would end his career. A helmet-to-helmet hit with Derrick Brooks left Gannon with a broken vertebra in his neck. With Gannon’s inevitable retirement, the Raiders have spun out of control and are now mired in the worst six year stretch in NFL history.  

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the 10 best moments of the last six years. Yes, there are actually 10 of them.

Subscribe to JBB

Follow JBB on Twitter

The ghost of Lane Kiffin is hovering above the AFC West.

Unbeknownst to Al Davis, Kiffin had a witch doctor implant his soul in the Raiders’ overhead projector. When Davis wheeled out the archaic device for his press conference, he unknowingly released the “Curse of Kiffin” on the AFC West. 

Luckily for Raider fans, we have exorcised the curse by defeating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the end of the 2008 season. The win in Tampa not only sent Chucky packing, but was also the final hurrah for Monte Kiffin’s NFL tenure. Thus, Al Davis had a hand in removing the Kiffin family from professional football.

The Raiders are now curse free, but the Broncos and Chiefs might just have to call in that midget from “Poltergeist” to cleanse the locker room.

The “Curse of Kiffin” entails a hot shot, punk of a coach who strolls in off the street and attempts to reinvent the wheel.

When the Chiefs hired Todd Haley they assumed they were getting a hot coaching prospect with the fire of Mike Ditka burning in his belly. Instead, Haley looks more the part of a blowhard coordinator turned overwhelmed head coach ala Mike Martz.

Haley was in the right place at the right time. He, like Martz, hit the Kurt Warner lottery and rode the bible thumping TD thrower to the big game. Let’s just say that Haley wasn’t thought to be an offensive genius when Matt Leinart was drinking from beer bongs and plugging Paris Hilton. But once Touchdown Jesus took over the starting job full-time – during a contract year no less – Todd Haley miraculously became a coaching commodity.

The healing powers of Kurt Warner are real, but the curse is stronger.

Haley inherited a franchise that hasn’t seen a playoff win since 1994. So Todd’s first order of business was to trade for a quarterback who, before 2008, had not started a game since he was the last kid picked in a shirts and skins game in 1994.

Matt Cassel balled in 2008 – a contract year no less – but he’s not playing for the Pats anymore. Matty Cass is used to holding hands with his teammates, skipping in unison to the whistles of Belichick as he takes to the field on Sundays.

Things are a little different in KC, Matty C. You’re going to have to spend Saturday nights keeping one eye on Larry Johnson at the club and your Sundays will start with dragging your Hall of Fame tight end, kicking and screaming, onto the field. Not a good sign when you’re the new shot caller in town and upon your arrival the best two players on your team both want to skip town. Dial Baron Davis for advice on this matter, his time as a Clipper might give you a few clues.

The Curse of Kiffin is not isolated to the Chief franchise. The Broncos are in the middle of the cruel Kiffin death sentence as well.

For some reason the Bronco brass assumed that a 32-year old punk knew more about football than a Raider killer of a coach with two Super Bowl rings.

Mike Shanahan was shown the exit and Josh McDaniels was given the keys. So far, the results have been a page from the script of a daytime soap opera.

The good news for the rest of us is that Josh McDaniels is looking like he’s got the Millen touch.

The all too public feud between Pro Bowl QB Jay Cutler and McD is making for better drama than the Bachelor finale. I really want ABC to get McDaniels and Culter to have a sit down on primetime. Just when Cutler is about to burst into tears, they could have Matt Cassel come out and throw his arm around McDaniels.

Sure, there would be an awkward moment of silence, but once Wilford Brimley reminds Culter to check his blood sugar, a fight would ensue and television history would be made.

Maybe Matt Cassel is worth all this trouble, but I’m not buying it. My instincts tell me that this is all due to the Curse of Kiffin.

In case you’re wondering why the Chargers are not at risk for the curse, well, that’s simple. They’ve got their own curse to deal with: The Norv Turner Curse of Mediocrity

For this curse, I’m afraid there is no cure. Sorry Charger fans, you’re just going to have to keep looking at that empty trophy case, dreaming of what never will be.

As for the Chiefs and Bronocs, here is how you break the curse:

First, the Broncos are going to have to trade Jay Cutler out of the AFC. For arguments sake, let’s just say he goes to Tampa Bay.

Next, the Chiefs and Broncos will have to give their new Colin Cowherd coaching clones a year on the job and then fire them a month into their second season. Here is where it gets tricky. One of the Broncos is going to have to take out Matt Cassel. Once Cassel is on the IR, Tyler Thigpen is going to have to ball out of his mind. Scott Piolo will be forced to franchise tag Thigpen as an insurance policy. Once Cassel assures everyone that he’ll be ready for the start of the next season, Thigpen will become dead cap weight. Deal Thigpen to the Buccaneers where he’ll replace the wounded ego of Cutler in Tampa. Cutler will go back on the Bachelor finale with Raheem Morris and Tyler Thigpen, causing yet another public scuffle and forcing the NFC South to deal with the Curse of Kiffin.

If anything good could come of the Curse of Kiffin, it would be that Haley and McDaniels will end up with bombshells on thier arms. Have fun nailing hot blondes, boys! You’ll need someone to listen to you moan about your cursed luck.