Raiders Redefine Awful in 44-7 Loss

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- It's easy to believe Tom Cable when he says he's not worried about the possible criminal assault charges that could be coming his way. Honestly, even if he gets arrested, how bad could it be compared to coaching the Raiders?

Unless he's going to be sentenced to watch an endless loop of his team's 44-7 loss to the Giants (or worse, one single replay of Sunday's Bills-Browns game), Cable has to be thinking about heading up to Napa County first thing Monday morning and turning himself in. Because as embarrassing as the Raiders can be off the field in the middle of the week, they show up on Sundays and take humiliation to new, ever-darker levels.

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This crime against football the Raiders committed Sunday at Giants Stadium was over before they parked their team bus. The Giants have practices that don't go this well. Seriously, pick the stat you think makes the Raiders look the worst:

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• How about the 116 total yards and two touchdowns racked up by Giants running back Ahmad Bradshaw ... in the first quarter? The one thing the Raiders actually did well in this game was stop Brandon Jacobs from forcing his way through the middle, but when the Giants put in Bradshaw, it was as if he were wearing some sort of magical jersey that made him impossible to see. Or, at least, to tackle.

• Raiders quarterback JaMarcus Russell didn't throw any interceptions, but that's mainly because he so rarely got a pass off. He was sacked six times by five different Giants players (Justin Tuck got him twice) and lost three fumbles. All told, he completed eight of his 13 pass attempts for an even 100 yards -- the kind of performance only Derek Anderson could admire.

• Giants quarterback Eli Manning, who basically didn't practice all week because of a foot injury, wanted desperately to play in this game, and it didn't take long to see why. Manning was 8-for-10 for 173 yards and two touchdowns and didn't even play the entire first half. In a bizarre quirk, this game actually featured three quarterbacks who were once selected with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft, and two of them actually played like it. Manning's backup, David Carr, was 9-for-14 for 90 yards in relief and mixed in a 12-yard rushing touchdown while the Raider defense was checking its Twitter feed in the second half.

"Other than our effort on special teams, we just got outplayed on both sides of the ball," Cable said. "I expected more out of us, and we just did not deliver today."


These are the words of a man in denial. Effort on special teams? That's the definition of a reach. When that's the only good thing you can say about your team's performance ... well, you're saying everything about your team's performance. And as for the expectations, on what does he base those? This was a complete slaughter from the national anthem on, and it didn't feel all that unusual. More than one Giants player made reference, in the postgame locker room, to the fact that the Raiders are among the NFL's winless teams this year. What's amazing about that is that they're not. They're "only" 1-4. But when you watch them (and, apparently, when you play against them) you can't imagine how it's possible that this team could play an entire 60-minute NFL game and finish with more points than the other team.

"We have to get better from top to bottom," said poor Richard Seymour, who found himself traded to this NFL sinkhole from the Patriots right before the start of the season. And while you've got to admire the sentiment, it's hard to imagine how they can even see the top from the bottom to which they have sunk.

There's simply nothing to like. Russell is a total wreck. He throws the ball into the ground for no good reason, imagining pressure in the rare cases in which he faces none. Their starting running back (Darren McFadden) is out for a month. They don't have a receiver for which you'd trade a backup guard. But even if they were at full strength, it's very difficult to think of Russell as the kind of quarterback who's going to bring stability and turn this thing around.

Asked if he considered taking Russell out of the game, Cable said no.

"I thought the issues were much greater than that today," he said.

On that we can agree. The problem for the Raiders is that this level of brutality isn't new, nor is there any evidence that it's temporary. There are now at least two current generations of NFL fans who can't even remember when "Commitment to Excellence" wasn't a joke. Raiders running back Justin Fargas is the son of Antonio Fargas, the actor who played Huggy Bear in the 1970s TV show "Starsky and Hutch." Other than its kooky owner, that's about the only connection the current Raiders have to a time when the Raiders rated among the league's elite teams.

Asked if he fears his team will start to believe it's just perpetuating more of the same old futility that has defined teams of recent Raider vintage, Cable said, "No, because it's not, and we're not them. It just really takes a few plays here or there to get yourself right again."

Again, though -- denial. There's nothing going on here that "a few plays" are going to fix. These Raiders are a dysfunctional mess whose quarterback is an all-time bust and whose coach could honestly, conceivably, all-joking-aside be arrested for assault any day now. Cable was also asked about that, of course, and he said he wouldn't talk about it.

"I respect the fact that you've got to ask the question, but the process will take care of it," Cable said. "There's 53 guys in that locker room that need me to be strong for them. I will not respond to any of it, I haven't, and when it's all settled and done, you'll see why."

And yet again, this really sounds like denial. Which would fit right in with everything else Cable said about his team and its prospects. That's the nice thing about the Raiders, though. You don't have to listen to what they say. Just watch what they do. Everything they do, on and off the field, is awful. And there's no denying that.