Oakland Raiders: A Lack Of Understanding Doesn’t Mean The Lack Of A Plan
By Kevin Saito
The end is near, Oakland Raiders fans. Just two more days to go and we’ll be free of the endless mock drafts, the stale, tired and rehashed news – yeah, sorry about that – and the seemingly never ending rumors and speculation. Surely, we can hang in there for another forty eight hours, can’t we?
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Given the thick blanket of smoke being thrown up by Reggie McKenzie, Jack Del Rio, and anybody else connected to the Raiders’ organization, actual news and information has been a bit hard to come by lately.
Lucky for us that Mark Purdy of the San Jose Mercury News has stepped into that breach to give us all something new – and something somewhat different – to talk about. In a recent column, Purdy, who is perhaps spinning his wheels as much as the rest of us, took a moment to opine about the “truth serum” the impending draft will be for both the Raiders and San Francisco 49ers by way of McKenzie and Trent Baalke.
The juxtaposition between the two men, and the two organizations is interesting, to be sure. But Purdy’s analysis of McKenzie in particular, leaves a lot to be desired.
“So far, I see McKenzie as more of a Guy With A Stopwatch than as an Architect. If you examine his drafts, McKenzie has been all over the place, taking players who score out as talented but don’t particularly fit into any specific system.”
Yes, this is an absolutely critical draft for McKenzie and the Raiders. Yes, he absolutely must get it right. And given the fact that he knocked the 2014 draft out of the park, and has had a tremendous 2015 offseason, given the impact of his free agent signings, there is little reason to believe that McKenzie is going to botch the whole thing up or somehow set Oakland back again.
Though in reading Purdy’s article, you get the sense that he thinks that’s exactly what is going to happen.
Purdy calls McKenzie the “Guy With A Stopwatch” type of general manager. He goes on to define the “Guy With A Stopwatch” as such:
"“By contrast, organizations headed up by a Guy With A Stopwatch are obsessed with finding players who have the top physical or mental attributes and pick them without regard for how they will fit into any particular architecture. They rely on the head coach to figure out the best way to use those players and hope it all works out.”"
The other type of GM that Purdy describes – the type he believes Baalke to be – is the “Architect.” And he defines the “Architect” as:
"“A strong-functioning organization decides how it wants to play football — i.e., physically dominating opponents with big players, or outrunning them with fast players, or outsmarting them with unique players who have unique attributes. The organization then takes that philosophy, hires coaches who can coach that style and players who can play that style. That takes an Architect.”"
It’s an interesting comparison and contrast of the two differing styles, there is no question. But it’s overly simplistic. If he truly thinks that McKenzie has been flying by the seat of his pants, has been picking players all willy-nilly, and that McKenzie is just a guy without any sort of coherent plan – but who has a nifty stopwatch – Purdy really hasn’t been paying attention and/or glosses over the recent history of the franchise.
Until McKenzie was hired on as Oakland’s general manager, the Raiders were an organization without a coherent philosophy, without a plan to move the team forward, and no idea how to accomplish their goals. Oh sure, Al Davis knew what he wanted – he wanted to win games and bring the Raiders back to glory. But his plan for doing it involved throwing tens of millions of dollars at players who were five years past their prime and looking at the backside of their careers.
As great as Al was in guiding the organization for so many years, he was just as bad, if not worse, for the last decade of his life. By Purdy’s definition, Al was the guy with the stopwatch.
But that all began to change when Mark Davis hired McKenzie on to oversee the rebuilding of the organization. To move the franchise forward again, McKenzie had to burn it to the ground and start over. Without much money to spend on free agents, or draft picks to re-stock the roster with for the first couple of years, he did the best he could with what he had.
The Raiders were a team with so many holes on a talent deficient roster that McKenzie’s draft strategy early on did seem to be “draft as many people as possible.” Every player he drafted though, actually fit an area of need for the team, and if you actually look closely, do suggest that perhaps, McKenzie had a plan in place. After all, we’re seeing some players from that 2013 draft who are expected to be major contributors to the team this coming season – Latavius Murray, Mychal Rivera, Sio Moore, and D.J. Hayden.
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McKenzie’s 2013 draft was relatively good. But he knocked the 2014 draft out of the park. Derek Carr, Khalil Mack, Gabe Jackson, Justin Ellis, Travis Carrie – these are all building blocks to the Raiders’ future, and players taken who filled needs on the roster.
For flying by the seat of his pants, and not having a real coherent plan, McKenzie sure did fill a lot of key spots on the roster with players who fit his overarching architectural philosophy. He sure got lucky, winging it as he did, to find so many key building blocks for this Raiders team, didn’t he?
Contrary to what Purdy thinks though, McKenzie has not been “all over the place” in terms of drafting players – he’s taken the best players available at positions of need for the team, not just the guys who ran the fastest.
If McKenzie made one mistake, it was in hiring Dennis Allen to be his head coach. Though a talented coordinator, Allen had no business on a sideline, running a team. He was weak. Ineffectual. And looked completely lost most of the time. At the time, he wasn’t cut out to be a head coach, and it showed.
Where Purdy’s thinking gets a little simplistic and seems to veer off course is when he says, “They rely on the head coach to figure out the best way to use those players and hope it all works out.”
Ummmm… isn’t that sort of in the job description of a head coach? To figure out how they can best use the talent on the roster they are given?
That point seems so obvious that it borders on the ridiculous to even have to point it out. And it seems even more ridiculous to try and knock McKenzie for drafting players who fit his own personal philosophy – or “architecture,” if you will.
McKenzie isn’t the X’s and O’s guy. It’s his job to build and furnish the house. And while Del Rio can and is helping to refine McKenzie’s vision and plan, it’s his job to arrange and organize that house with the pieces he’s given.
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And that’s where having a strong and intelligent coach, somebody who knows the game inside and out – like Del Rio – will pay huge dividends. A coach of Del Rio’s caliber can take all of the seeming disparate parts on the Raiders’ roster, and build his schemes around the talent he has – rather than trying to jam all of the players into a preconceived and rigid philosophy and scheme.
That was Allen’s problem and it led to his ultimate downfall. He never adjusted his scheme to fit the talent on the roster. He simply expected the talent to conform to his scheme. And that is a mistake that Del Rio and his staff will not make. They are committed to being flexible and to adapting their schemes and game plans around the players they have – rather than the other way around.
Having a strong football mind like Del Rio’s also benefits McKenzie in other ways. You can see Del Rio’s influence on this year’s crop of free agents – a crop of free agents that is miles and miles better than last season’s. The middle of that Oakland defense is stronger with the additions of Dan Williams, Malcolm Smith, Nate Allen, and Curtis Lofton, and that likely has a lot to do with the new head coach’s input.
These players were taken because they will be able to work well within Del Rio’s system, but because they also fit into McKenzie’s overarching architecture – high character guys who work hard, blend into the culture he’s trying to create, put the team first, and are strong locker room presences. That’s McKenzie’s “architecture,” and as the head coach, it’s Del Rio’s job to get the most out of them.
And that is most definitely not the negative that Purdy seems to be attempting to make it out to be. That is a sign of a coach and GM working well together, and a sign of an organization really beginning to move forward as a cohesive unit. It’s the sign of a team with more than just a stopwatch, it’s a team with a plan.
Purdy’s oversimplistic arguments fall very, very flat. And given the defined roles of both the GM and the head coach, they don’t seem to make a lot of sense. Also, given the fact that we know the Raiders’ biggest areas of need heading into the draft, it’s not clear what sort of “truth serum” Purdy thinks we’ll be getting as we expect McKenzie to address those areas of need.
If Purdy had sat down and really thought about it before writing that article, he might have seen that McKenzie is actually closer to being his definition of the “Architect” than he thinks — or is willing to give him credit for. Again, in his own words because they are worth repeating:
"“A strong-functioning organization decides how it wants to play football — i.e., physically dominating opponents with big players, or outrunning them with fast players, or outsmarting them with unique players who have unique attributes.”"
By Purdy’s own words, you can see that McKenzie fits the definition. He and Del Rio share a vision and are on the same page in deciding how they want this team to play — and they are taking the steps to accomplish just that. If one of the two GM’s in the Bay Area seems to be making it up as he goes along, given the way the offseasons have played out, it seems to be Baalke.
Just because Purdy can’t see or doesn’t understand McKenzie’s plan, it doesn’t mean that a plan doesn’t exist. It simply means that Purdy either doesn’t grasp McKenzie’s vision for the club — or that he didn’t really think through his argument before writing his article. Or perhaps it’s a combination of the two.
Only forty eight more hours to go…