Raidersblog.com

The first preseason game could answer questions or it could create new ones and complicate old ones. There is no way to know what will happen Thursday night in Dallas. More than anything, the coaches want to make it through the preseason without significant injuries. There are plenty of questions that need to be answered and the coaches will start to answer them Thursday in Dallas. Who will win the third running back job: Michael Bennett or Rock Cartwright? Each back has a different style despite similarly small statures. Cartwright being the better special teams player and much more physical. Bennett is a quicker, faster and can get to the edge. This will be a tough call the coaches will have to make. Cartwright is a little more useful as long as McFadden and Bush are carrying the load, but should the third back be pushed into starter duty as it was multiple times last year, Bennett would probably be the back you’d want to have. Will the return game improve? The coaches would p...

Third in a series analyzing players on the 2010 Raiders that need to step up their game for the Raiders to become a playoff team. Who Will Cover? The strength of the starting linebackers in 2009 was certainly their ability to play the pass. Thomas Howard, Kirk Morrison and Ricky Brown were all more adept at playing the pass than they were at playing the run. (Photo Credit: Jeffrey Beall) Flash-forward to 2010 and the starting linebackers are Trevor Scott, Rolando McClain and Kamerion Wimbley. Three new linebackers, two pass rushers and one rookie. The drastic change comes on the heels of yet another poor year stopping the run. While some of that can certainly be placed upon the interior line play, the one constant had been Morrison and Howard. Morrison was shipped out of town, but Howard remains with an uncertain roll. The Raiders have a totally different question surrounding the linebackers in 2010. Can they cover? Scott, a converted defensive end, was effective rushing the ...

If football games are won in the trenches, it only seems appropriate to take a closer look at the Raiders’ defensive line. The Raiders released Gerard Warren this winter and drafted Lamarr Houston from the University of Texas to solidify the defensive line. Warren was inconsistent, showing flashes the past couple seasons. The former first-round selection has never played to his talent level. The Raiders were the third team to give up on him. Of course, he was also due a sizable salary in 2010 and that money can be put to better use. The Raiders have surprising decided to put Houston at defensive end, instead of his college position of defensive tackle. What on the surface seems like an odd move is actually a very logical one. Houston’s talents would be wasted playing the one-technique tackle position and the three-technique tackle position is still being occupied by Tommy Kelly. Kelly has been much criticized due to the large contract he received in 2007. While Kelly may never liv...

Did the Raiders fix the run defense with the revamping of the linebackers? It is one of the biggest questions the Raiders will need to answer this offseason. If so, can the linebackers Trevor Scott, Rolando McClain, and Kamerion Wimbley also cover running backs out of the backfield and tight ends on passing downs? The Raiders started 2009 with Thomas Howard, Kirk Morrison, and Ricky Brown as the starters. By the end of the year Scott had supplanted Howard on the weak-side and Howard had moved to the strong-side for the injured Ricky Brown. When Sam Williams and a rookie fifth-round draft pick get meaningful snaps, it is time for an overhaul. So the Raiders started the overhaul, traded for Wimbley, drafted McClain, and finally traded for Quentin Groves and shipped out Kirk Morrison. Trevor Scott Scott developed into a nice linebacker last season, but wasn’t asked to drop into coverage very often. In five games as a linebacker, Scott dropped into pass coverage 65 times. This amounted to ...

ESPN is at it again. People who work for ESPN can't do anything on Twitter. They can tell you they are going to the bathroom or waking up in the morning, but anything sports related will have to go through ESPN approval process. Basically, all the ESPN peoples twitter feeds are nothing more than either A) Boring or B) tools of the empire. Twelve NFL teams also ban Twitter among players and beat writers during camp. For most teams with open training camp, that means the fans can better use Twitter to communicate things than can the beat writer. The beat writer would have to sacrifice his access to players and coaches to tweet. Now fans will tweet incorrect information that the beat writer would otherwise would have cleared up before tweeting it. Such as why a player sat out a practice, etc. Thankfully, our beat writers have kept the tweets rolling in from the "private" training camp in Napa. I won't be too hard on these guys, but there seems to be a disproportionate am...