Jason O. Watson-US PRESSWIRE

You won’t hear much analysis of the San Francisco 49ers signing of special teams ace and locker room leader Rock Cartwright. Journeyman special teamers don’t get their contract details crawled across the screen on ESPN. Guys like Cartwright aren’t relevant in fantasy football and certainly don’t get endorsement deals to sell insurance on Super Bowl Sunday ads.

But it is guys like Cartwright that are the heartbeat of pro football. Team first players, willing to do whatever is asked by the coaching staff with nothing more than a sense of duty every time they take the field.

The Oakland Raiders didn’t just lose a special teams contributor today when Rock Cartwright took his talents to The City. They lost a team captain, a two-time winner of the Commitment to Excellence Award and a leader in the locker room who just so happened to play on special teams and occasionally played a little running back.

Some losses can’t be measured by statistics. Some gains aren’t as obvious as the details of a contract.

The Raiders suffered a loss today, even worse they lost out to their Ba y Area rivals. No way the 9ers’ gain makes them Super Bowl contenders just as the Raiders’ loss won’t ruin their playoff chances. This is just one of those things that comes with the business of pro football and the reality of how important it is to have chemistry in the locker room.

Cartwright will be missed even if it isn’t obvious on the field next season. The good news for him is that he didn’t have to move across country to get work. The better news is he surely made a lasting impression on the young talent in Oakland’s locker room who got to see a true pro go to work everyday.

Without guys like Jason Campbell and Rock Cartwright this franchise would still be stuck in that silver and black spiral that threatened to make the Raiders irrelevant for an entire decade. Neither of them got to compete in a playoff game as a Raider but rest assured the Raiders couldn’t have even got back into contention for playoff contests without them.

Cary Edmondson-US PRESSWIRE

Last night Rock Cartwright was honored with the Commitment To Excellence award as voted on by his teammates. For Cartwright it marks the second consecutive year he’s gained the honro. As you might recall the last man to win the award twice was Justin Fargas with his second one coming mere days after the Raiders severed ties with the fearless runner.

Cartwright is in a similar boat as an unrestricted free agent. Unlike Fargas he hasn’t been told by the team that his services are no longer necessary. However he hasn’t been told he’ll be retained either.

Life in the NFL is cruel. No other sports industry so blatantly displays the clear cut line between business and entertainment. Fargas found out about that and more recently the likes of Peyton Manning have even learned the harsh lesson.

Fargas never played in another NFL game. He briefly was in camp with the Broncos but never caught on. Cartwright will likely have suitors somewhere in the league should the Raiders let him walk. Though he plays running back Cartwright has carved his niche on special teams. He’s also invaluable in the locker room as evident by his teammates twice voting him as the Commitment award recipient in his two years as a Raider.

How much Cartwright’s presence matters to Reggie McKenzie is yet to be seen.

Even with Darren McFadden’s injury absence Cartwright saw almost no action as a runner. Instead the Raiders leaned almost exclusively on Michael Bush with occasional appearances by rookie Taiwan Jones. That fact alone could be reason enough for McKenzie to part ways with Cartwright. His salary isn’t so great that the Raiders will save any serious cash without Rock but these days Oakland needs every dime they can get.

Much like Fargas, Cartwright takes the high road when discussing his future with the franchise. He understands the nature of this business yet doesn’t seem to be phased by it at all.

Going forward the Raiders will need locker room leaders like Cartwright in order to build a solid foundation. Not everything that makes for a great football team can be equated to fantasy football production or ESPN analysis. More often than it it’s the things that are shared privately by the players and coaches that creates champions. The Raiders can surely win without Cartwright but doing so in class could prove difficult.

Still, there is a task at hand. While I won’t pretend to know Davis I can confidently say that he would want his team to continue to prepare for Sunday’s game in Houston. Never forget that the only business Al Davis every truly knew was football.

With that being said the Raiders made a couple roster moves today.
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