S.F. Examiner: Raiders continue to soar when they need to

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

The decibels were building, 16, 17, 18, according to numbers on the scoreboard, the fans trying to emulate a jet engine, lifting off a runway, soaring.

The momentum was building, one touchdown, another touchdown, another touchdown, a ringing of the Raider bell — bong, bong — a football team lifting off, soaring.

Read the full story here.

©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

For Raiders, no success ‘without a Super Bowl’

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Wait ’til next year. Or the year after that. Or the Twelfth of Never. The Raiders aren’t there yet, perhaps aren’t even close to being there, meaning the postseason, where they last played 13 years ago, a virtual lifetime in the NFL.

Are they better than last season? Their record would indicate as much. Even after getting beaten by the superior Green Bay Packers, 30-20, Sunday in the rain and chill at O.Co Coliseum, and being eliminated from the playoffs, the Raiders are 6-8. And wins in their final two games, unlikely since one is at Kansas City, would make them 8-8, which would be their best record since 2011.

They had a new coach this season, Jack Del Rio, and after defeating the Jets in early November had a 4-3 record. Where would they go from there? Nowhere, it turned out. At least figuratively. Progress, sure — from three wins a year ago, it was inevitable they would progress. Still, that doesn’t placate the fans, drenched and deflated, who toughed it out. Or the veteran defensive back Charles Woodson.

Someone wondered if the season could be described as success, what with victories over the Jets and, a week ago, the Denver Broncos. Woodson had a ready response. “There is no success,” he said, “without a Super Bowl.”

This from a 37-year-old who entered the league in 1998, was drafted by and played with the Raiders, moved to the Green Bay Packers where he got that Super Bowl and then in 2013 returned to Oakland. This from a man who has battled and survived and, even Sunday, after another bruise to his sore right shoulder, missed only one scrimmage play before re-entering the game.

“But,” added Woodson, “progress has been made.”

The Raiders have fallen — or raised — themselves into the category called teasers. As opposed to finishers. The Raiders are out there making big runs, big receptions, big defensive stops — and big mistakes.

As in the first period Monday, when they — meaning quarterback Derek Carr — threw two interceptions and fell behind 14. After which they pulled ahead, 20-17. After which they gave up two touchdowns and a field goal.

Is it a lack of experience, of understanding how champions compete, or a lack of talent? Is it a failure in the coaching or a failure in comprehension? Is it bad breaks or bad play?

For seasons the Raiders have been heavily penalized, a legacy of the late owner Al Davis, who often said he didn’t care about discipline. And while there has been improvement in 2015, the penalties remain a major negative. Time after time Monday, the Raiders were called for pass interference, illegal use of hands or holding. In all, the Raiders had 10 penalties for 95 yards, the Packers six for 75 yards.

On a third and sixth, a pass is knocked down, a flag is thrown and the Packers — or the Chiefs, or the Steelers — have a first down. “Just play with better technique,” said Del Rio about the calls. “I saw a couple examples where guys were trailing and did not play with proper technique. That will be called every time. Wasn’t even close.”

Nor were the two quick interceptions by Carr, who, in his second year, has not attained a level of consistency needed by winners. In the middle of the first quarter, Micah Hyde picked off a Carr pass at the Oakland 36. Four plays later, the Pack led 7-0. One play later, a 43-yard interception return by Damarious Randall made it 14-0.

“The first interception,” said Carr, “I tried to sneak it in without the guy seeing me, and he turned his head around and caught it. The second just got high on me. It did. I wish I had the play over. I’d love to bring it down, obviously, but that’s where I wanted to throw it. It was just high.”

After the one-two punch, Del Rio brought Carr to his side, not to criticize but to reassure. “It was just, ‘Things like that are going to happen, I believe in you,’” Shaw said of the coach’s advice. “‘You already know these things. Just go out there and be yourself.’”

For now, Carr being himself is not good enough. He’s an individual on the verge. The Raiders are a team on the verge. But so far that’s not enough.

“In critical situations,” said Woodson, the wise and relatively old man, “you can’t beat yourself. It’s hard enough to go out there and play the other team. As this team grows, we’ll get better at those type of things.”

For that we must wait. ’Til next year, or well after that.

Are Warriors bigger than 49ers, Raiders?

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — This always was NFL territory. The 49ers were an original, created in 1946, the first major league team in the Bay Area, home grown, home owned.

The Raiders also began here, in 1960, and they put Oakland on the map and in the minds of a sporting public back east that previously didn’t know Jack London from Jack Spratt. If you lived in Oakland, or San Leandro, you no longer had to explain, “Near San Francisco.”

The Niners reinforced their standing as the region’s team of choice with five Super Bowl wins. The Raiders became as notorious as they were successful, and suddenly black became the color of choice.

So popular was football you’d see kids throwing and catching one in the parking lots before baseball games of the Giants and Athletics.

Has there been a shift in preference? When asked to rank the teams in order of importance, the decision was Niners first, Giants next, Raiders third, Warriors fourth, Athletics fifth and solely because hockey, as exciting as it might be, didn’t have the weather or conditions required, the Sharks sixth.

But now I wonder. Yes, the Niners finally won a road game Sunday, beating the Bears in Chicago, 26-20, thus keeping the Faithful faithful. And here in Oakland, after a morning rain, the Raiders drew 55,010 fans to O.co Coliseum, where, unfortunately, the team showed with a 34-20 loss to Kansas City that it’s not as good as hoped. 

Indeed, football is big. But bigger than the Warriors, the sports story of the late fall in Northern Cal — or maybe everywhere? With their remarkable season-opening win streak, now up to an NBA record 22, after they beat the Brooklyn Nets, 114-98, Sunday? With their wonderful talent named Steph Curry who, with apologies to Tom Brady or Cam Newton, may be the single most exciting athlete in the land, and unquestionably is the most exciting around here?

Yes, I was at O.Co Coliseum for the Raiders. I also watched the Niners, and I contended that despite the problems with Jed York, with Colin Kaepernick, with the departure of Jim Harbaugh, they still are worthy of the main headline. It was a losing debate. “You’re wrong,” said the Chronicle’s Ann Killion. “The Warriors are the team.”

Raider Nation still is very much with us. The Black Hole remains (although after Sunday‘s loss it’s as blue as the color of the Warriors’ road uniforms). Niner fans cling to the memories of Montana, Young, Rice and Lott, believing the past is prelude to the future. TV ratings for both 49ers and Raiders are solid. And yet...

The football teams are mediocre at best. The win over Chicago put the Niners at 4-8. The loss to the Chiefs — “The game got away from us,” said Oakland coach Jack Del Rio — left the Raiders at 5-7. Neither is going to the playoffs.

But, ah, the Warriors, perfection, 22-0. Never been done before. Ever. Historic. Fantastic. The defending NBA champions very well could win a second straight championship. The team of Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, Milpitas and Marin. The Warriors resonate. But how much?

Basketball, like baseball and hockey, suffers from a multiplicity of games. Right now, certainly, each Warriors game has a place of its own, as anxious fans wonder if the next one will be the one they finally, inevitably lose. This is rare. This is wonderful. This is keeping us attentive.

This is transforming one of 82 into one of a kind, similar to what happens in the NFL. Each game has a special significance. The Raiders came into Sunday at 5-6, the Chiefs 6-5. A Raider victory would have changed the season for each team. We buy into that “Any given Sunday” idea because, yes, any given Sunday, or Monday or Thursday, does have an effect on a team, on a season.

So you heard Del Rio, after the Raiders squandered their lead by allowing KC three touchdowns on a combination of Derek Carr interceptions and long returns, say, “Tough way to finish. Promising afternoon. It just got away from us.”

He meant the game. We could also interpret it to mean the season. “The last four drives,” sighed Del Rio, “were three turnovers and a missed field goal.”

Those descriptions also apply in basketball. The missed field goals and turnovers by the Warriors didn’t hurt them. For the opening five weeks and 22 games of the 2015-16 season, nothing has hurt them.

They have become the darlings of pro basketball, the darlings of the Bay Area. But are they bigger than the 49ers or Raiders? Easier to say how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Raiders control ball, Peyton — and still can’t win

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — This is what happens to teams that aren’t quite there, teams that show progress but often don’t show results, teams that are difficult to embrace but even more difficult to criticize.

You want terrible? Look at the Detroit Lions, getting booed at home, benching first-rounders for bench-warmers. The Lions are terrible and readily identified as much. In contrast to the Oakland Raiders, who as young teams with new coaches do so frequently, entice and tease and then trip over themselves. Clunk.

Not many boo. Instead, they gasp.

The Raiders on Sunday played arguably their best defensive game in years. They controlled the ball — having it for 34 minutes of the 60. For the most part they controlled the great Peyton Manning, who threw  two interceptions and no touchdowns passes for a mediocre passer rating of 62.3, compared to the appreciably better rating of 82.1 by Raiders second-year quarterback Derek Carr.

But as we’ve been told forever and a day, the only number that matters is the final score. The rest is eyewash, material for talk shows and feature stories. At an O.Co Coliseum filled with passion and hope, the final score was Broncos 16, Raiders 10.

That’s the fewest points the Broncos scored this season. No less importantly, after two missed field goals, a lost fumble and a killer interception, a pass returned 74 yards in the fourth quarter when the Broncos were in front only 9-7, that’s the fewest the Raiders scored this season.

Yes, could have, perhaps should have. But didn’t.

The Raiders, with mistakes small and large, so encouraging and then, wham, so disappointing, are not yet capable. “They were supposed to win,” said Carr. “We expected to win.” But they were not yet ready to win.

Sebastian Janikowski set a team record for the number of games played as a Raider, 241. But he had one field goal blocked and another go wide from 40 yards. “Sometimes it happens,” said Seabass.

And Carr lost a fumbled snap on Oakland’s first play from scrimmage in the second half, and then on a misread — “We didn’t execute,” Carr said in a statement that indicted nobody — with the ball on Denver 31, Carr’s throw was picked by Cliff Harris Jr. and returned 74 yards for a TD.

“I always take full accountability,” said Carr, who in his words and actions seems more mature than someone in only his second year as a pro — but in his football occasionally plays exactly like someone in only his second year as a pro.

The game is one of overcoming errors. The best, the veterans, have their problems but not very many when matched against others. In Green Bay on Sunday, Aaron Rodgers even threw an interception. But it was his first in a home game in three years. The longer you go the fewer mistakes you make, and so, the longer you go.

Manning has gone longer than most. He’s 39, the same age as Raiders safety Charles Woodson, who after seasons of facing him finally had his first interception off Manning. But Peyton wasn’t unnerved. Upset, yes, but not unnerved. He’s in his 16^th season. He learned long ago to soldier on. Learned how to win, or more directly learned how to enable his team to win.

Raiders coach Jack Del Rio knows about both losing and winning and, as the former Broncos defensive coordinator, knows all about Manning. Del Rio particularly coveted a victory over his former team yet understood why the Raiders couldn’t get it.

“I thought we gave ourselves a chance,” said Del Rio, which only sounds good. Oakland, after consecutive defeats, now is 2-3. The Broncos are 5-0, and that stat far outdoes Manning’s interceptions and lack of TD passes.

Woodson was asked in a game when the opposing offense, Denver, was held to three field goals — the touchdown, remember, was a pick six, or interception return — if he would expect a win.

“Yeah, I suppose,” he said, trying to be elusive. “Defensively, we came out. We felt like were prepared and could do some things against them. We were able to, limiting those guys, but we just weren’t able to do enough.”

That’s the inevitable summation from a team that falls short, a team that competes, that excites, that tempts and then, because for one reason or another, ends up losing.

A team like the Oakland Raiders.

One game may have changed it all for Raiders

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — One game. One game that ended differently. One game that for the Oakland Raiders may have washed away dozens of games. One game that changed the hopes and vibes of a football team that of late always found way to lose, but on a Sunday that could turn out to be seminal — as well as memorable — found a way to win.

For nearly 58 minutes, the Oakland Raiders had been ahead or tied. Then, after an interception, the mistake the Raiders always seem destined to make, they trailed by three points. And a still loyal but all too realistic crowd at O.co Coliseum knew it the same old Raiders.

But the kid who threw the interception, Derek Carr, was thinking these Raiders were different. “I was just thinking, man, just give us a chance,” he said. “Please, Lord, give us a chance.”

He got that chance. The Raiders got that chance. With 26 seconds left, Carr connected with Seth Roberts in the south end zone, the Black Hole end zone. The Raiders, the hard-luck, how-are-they-going-to-screw-up-this-time Raiders, were winners, 37-33.

Carr is the second-year quarterback in whom the Raiders have placed their future. The choice appears to be brilliant. We know his background: the younger brother of David Carr, also a quarterback, also from Fresno State, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2002 draft by Houston.

But lineage is only so important. What would Derek do when he had to pull off the winning drive, had to be another Joe Montana or Ken Stabler or Tom Brady?

After Sunday, after the Raiders, who looked so bad a week ago in the opening game, evened their record at 1-1, we have a very good idea. He moved the Raiders 80 yards. On a hot day — it was 90 degrees by the Bay — Carr was properly cool, as successful QBs must be.

This after leaving last week’s game with a hand injury and leaving journalists to ask numerous questions about his condition that went unanswered by head coach Jack Del Rio.

“One week of people thinking I’m hiding something, or whatever,” said Del Rio. “It was a normal week. He threw the ball well and prepared hard. There was just a lot because he couldn’t finish last week … It’s a testament to his desire and willingness to do the extra things to get his body to recover.”

The Raiders, so steeped in nostalgia and, in the last decade, failure. The torch up on the plaza adjacent to the south stands is lighted each game — Sunday it was by the great lineman Art Thoms — to the memory of the late Al Davis. The frustrated fans who, declining in number, still show up at a stadium the team is threatening to desert. The thoughts of the way it used to be back in the 1970s and 80s, when the Raiders were the NFL’s bad guys, and Davis relished that concept.

Yet, sports are of the moment. The Raiders haven’t had a winning record in more than a decade, and after the 33-13 pummeling eight days earlier, you might have thought they never would have one. But the Del Rio influence cannot be underestimated. He came home, having grown up in neighboring Hayward, to restore the heart of a franchise he cheered for as a kid.

Now he has his first victory as a Raiders head coach, and although that was passed over because of the performance of Carr — 30 of 46 for 351 yards and three touchdowns, including the ultimate one — surely that meant something to contemplate.

“That was one heck of an effort,” said Del Rio, emphasizing the team rather than the individual. “I saw a lot of examples of guys really emptying their bucket, a phrase that says they really had given all they had — straining, not flinching in tough circumstances, finding a way.

“The head coach and the quarterback are the only two guys in the organization directly tied to wins and losses, and to see our young quarterback take our team down there to the end like that was special.”

Michael Crabtree, the receiver late of the 49ers, said “The quarterback stuck in their like everybody else. The offensive line did good. The running backs made extra plays. The wide receivers were out there doing all they can.”

Carr did what he had to do, especially after the interception with five minutes to play and the game tied, 30-30.

“I told the guys in the huddle to believe it,” said Carr. “We’ve done it a thousand times.”

In practice. Now they’ve done it a game. What a change.