Jack Del Rio Must Bring Back ‘Us Against The World’ Mentality
By Kevin Saito
The Autumn Wind is a Raider, and Jack Del Rio understands that as well as anybody. If ever there was a man born to coach this team, it’s Del Rio. He just seems to fit the Oakland Raiders mold and there is little doubt that the late Al Davis would have heartily approved of his hiring.
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From the moment he was announced as Oakland’s next head coach, Del Rio rolled up his sleeves and got to work, helping shape the roster while charting the way forward for the franchise. From the signings of Dan Williams and Curtis Lofton to the drafting of Amari Cooper and Clive Walford, you can see Del Rio’s fingerprints and feel his influence all over the organization.
And for a team that’s been lost at sea as long as the Raiders have – twelve straight years without a winning record and counting – that can’t be anything but a good thing.
GM Reggie McKenzie – though still widely unappreciated by many – has helped load Oakland’s roster with solid, young talent and a few savvy veterans to provide leadership and guidance. And in Del Rio, they have what could very well be one of the key ingredients to getting the team back on the winning track – a tough as nails, no-nonsense type of coach with a blue collar work ethic, who takes garbage from nobody.
The last time the Raiders had a coach cut from perhaps not the same, but certainly from a similar cloth – did somebody say Jon Gruden? – the team seemed to do pretty well.
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Now that he’s in control of the team, and is shaping the roster to his liking, Del Rio is taking on the next big challenge – bringing back the mystique of the team he grew up loving.
Once upon a time, the Raiders were one of, if not the, most feared football teams in the league. They were ferocious, physically intimidating, and would not hesitate to knock anybody’s block off. When asked to describe that mystique during an interview on SiriusXM NFL Radio, Del Rio described it this way:
“Let me tell you what the mystique was. It was people knowing they were going to get pounded when they played the Raiders. There was fear developed through physical play of this football team. We want to bring that physicality back.”
Of course, that physically intimidating style of play also led to a whole lot of penalties – which, has also sort of become part of the Raiders’ mystique over the years. But Del Rio’s aim is to bring back that physical intimidation – but to do it smartly.
"“We want to bring swagger back, but it has to be controlled, calculated and fundamentally sound. It has to lead to winning football. It’s not the kind where you’re drawing penalties and playing sloppy and undisciplined.”"
Bringing that mystique and swagger back, teaching them to be physically dominant and to impose their will upon opposing teams would be a tremendous thing for a young ball club looking to shed the failures of the past and forge a new, wining path into the future.
But physicality aside, another part of that Raider mystique that Del Rio would do well to cultivate and nurture would be something that Al Davis himself made sure was ingrained into the very fabric of the Raiders of old – an absolute “us against the world” mentality.
During their true heyday, and during the glory years, the Raiders were the league’s castoffs and misfits. Oakland was the place where the NFL’s spare parts came to find a home. And overseeing it all was Al Davis, who was constantly giving the league, as well as all of his detractors, double middle fingers – and smiling about it every step of the way.
Davis enjoyed the fact, even seemed to revel in the idea that it was the world against his Raiders – of course, that’s an attitude he helped cultivate with his constant nose thumbing at the league. Oakland had a well earned reputation as a group of rebels and outlaws – dudes you did not want to meet in an alley on a dark night.
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But perhaps because of that “us against the world” mentality that Davis fostered so fiercely, the Raiders had a very tight knit group in their locker room. They were brothers. And nobody fights harder than somebody fighting for their brothers.
In a way, history appears to be repeating itself and Oakland needs that “us against the world” mentality perhaps now, more than ever. For it truly does seem like it is the world against the Raiders at this moment in time.
Nobody in the sports media complex believes they can be a competitive squad. You even have media blowhards like Stephen A. Smith, live on the air, screaming at the top of his lungs – which is his usual style, of course – that Amari Cooper should not be “contaminated” by the Raiders.
Countless articles go on and on about how Oakland is the place careers go to die. And look at the odds being posted by the sports books to see just how poor the casinos feel Oakland’s chances of winning more than a handful of games, let alone a Super Bowl are. Read any of a million articles where Oakland is mentioned, and see just how poorly they are expected to fare in 2015 by a wide swath of the media complex. By a wide swath of the world.
Listen to anybody outside of the Raider Nation, and you’ll see that nobody has any faith that this team can be competitive. That this team can win.
Yes, the Raiders have an albatross made up of more than a decade of losing around their collective necks. It’s unfortunately, one the organization has earned. And the only way to get that albatross off their necks is to shut out the voices of the detractors, the pessimists, and the haters and focus on the task at hand. The only way to put that albatross to rest, is to just win, baby.
Which is exactly why Del Rio needs to get his players in that bunker mentality. Which is why he needs to really bring back that “us against the world” mentality that Davis once fostered so intensely – a mentality that helped bring about some tremendous success.
Those Raider teams of old were never the most talented. But they were very unified, and they stood together as one against the rest of the world. And they won. A lot.
Del Rio wants players with a chip on their shoulders, but he also needs a team with an even bigger chip on its collective shoulder. He needs for this team to use all of the negativity, all of the criticism, the doubts, and the hate as fuel. They need to take the energy of all of those people who say they can’t and won’t win, and use it as motivation to go out and impose their will on the field.
By standing together, by believing it truly is the world against them, the Raiders just might be able to accomplish some terrific things in 2015. Each and every win Oakland manages to muster will be a big double middle finger directly in the faces of the Stephen A. Smith’s of the world, as well as all of the doubters and the haters.
And we can’t help but believe that Al would enjoy that immensely.
With Del Rio at the helm, and his team standing together as one, the Autumn Wind will be blowing strong across the Bay again very soon.