NFL Dos and Don'ts: Oakland Raiders

As we prepare for another year of NFL football, let's take a look back at the highs and lows from 2014 for each team. Welcome to NFL Dos and Don'ts. If you missed one, you can read all our recaps right here.

Do

The Raiders. Yeesh, this is a tough one. After losing Super Bowl XXXVII to the Buccaneers, the Raiders have never won more than eight games in a season. And they've only done that twice. Usually they hover in the 3-5 win range; last year, it was three. What I'm trying to say here is, things are bleak. I'm a Jets fan—the New York Jets, where a starting quarterback gets his jaw broken by a teammate—and I would rather be a Jets fan than a Raiders fan. So…things are bleak. But there are some good things to talk about. First, let's start with the 'Do.

Holy shit, will you look at that thing. Mark Davis, son of the late Al Davis, is now principal owner of the Raiders. This is what he looks like. And you know what? Fuck it, Do have this kind of hairdo. Do you know how confident this man has to be to walk around like that? He's got a tiny Cousin Itt growing on his dome and he doesn't seem to care at all. If you walked behind him you might think one of the guys from ZZ Top lost his beard and attached itself to someone else's head. And Mark Davis does this on purpose. Outstanding; I wish I had that kind of follicular fortitude.

But let's be fair to the Raiders and give them their due. We can surely find something football related to praise. And we have! It was their first win in more than a calendar year—things are bleak—and it came against the rival Chiefs. It was not without some drama, though. After taking a four-point lead with less than two minutes to go, the Raiders just had to keep KC out of the end zone. They were doing a pretty good job of it, forcing a fourth-and-long from midfield with just about 30 seconds left, when everything got dicey.

Thinking the game was basically over—and it was basically over, unless the Raiders really fucked something up—the Raiders went into an extended sack dance some 20 yards in the backfield. Justin Tuck had the presence of mind to call a timeout. Otherwise the Raiders would have been penalized and KC would be that much closer to the end zone, with time to pick out a play, rather than rushing to get one off quick because they had no timeouts. It all worked out in the end—even though the Chiefs did get the benefit of a timeout—but man did they make everyone sweat it out.

Don't

Ball control and safety is about as fundamental as it gets in football. It's one of those things that makes pundits say "National Football League" in very halting speech. "You don't win games in the NATIONAL [beat] FOOTBALL [beat] LEAGUE turning the ball over." There' a grain of truth in there because, no, you can't score if you are always dropping the ball, especially if the other team picks it up. Worse, if the other team picks it up and they score, you now have to score that much more just to keep up, which you can't do because you keep dropping the ball. It's a vicious cycle that played out in a single play for the Raiders last year.

James Jones fumbled the ball twice on one play, which is a pretty impressive thing to do, really. The only good thing about this obvious Don't, though, is that he at least fumbled it forward. It was originally a 26-yard catch, but then he fumbled it along the sideline. Everyone kind of stood around for a second and let him pick it back up and he raced towards the end zone where he then had it stripped. Houston recovered it on the three-yard line and took over from there. It had the effect of being one of the best punts on second down you'll ever see. Which is good, I guess, but you generally Don't want to punt on second down.