Fire good, Al Davis MVP, Al Davis good!
A cognitively impaired mind has trouble seeing good, bad, shades of gray in any person or concept.
No doubt Davis was a brilliant innovative football man and a better human being [Loved his civil rights record]; but he lost his mind sometime in the mid 2000’s. Davis was a pioneer in many ways of football thinking, one was correctly placing a greater emphasis on the importance of speed.
But later in his career he became obsessed with measurables, gave them far too much weight in his draft decisions. He became so focused on measurables, that he single-handedly destroyed a great franchise. And it is for this that I declare Al Davis a complete and total dumbass. It is really too bad that he tarnished his legacy by not recognizing his draft, trade and FA strategy based almost solely on draft measurables directly correlated to a team that “just sucked, baby.” Had Davis lived with his continually deteriorating condition, eventually he’d have: rejected the draft all together; worked to sign as many Olympic track stars as possible; and replaced his entire scouting staff with Uffda, whose job would be to gather a list of 40 times of any athlete eligible to signed as a FA [Sorry RaiderPride] 😂 😂.
In hindsight, it appears Davis lost his mind after the 2003 draft because his insane stop-watch incest fetish would have never permitted him to draft the relative tortoise Asomugha [Davis’ last probowl 1st rounder]. Gallery, Routt, Washington, Huff, Russell, McFadden, H-Bey, McClain and Wisniewski [Wonderlic] were all over-drafted [Maybe not Washington-But it was the pick right before AR, ouch] because measurables were given inappropriate weight relative to the players’ ability to play football. My favorite was Marcus Van Dyke [2011-“4.28 baby”], who I dreamed of bookending with Sammy as UDFA Miami CBs; Davis took him in the mid third...THE THIRD!!!!!! INSANE! And the trades for the SPEEDY Randy Moss and SPEEDY Angelo Hall and FA acquisition for physical freak Javon walker [2008-6yr/55m/16g] were stupefyingly stupid.
If post-2003 incesting for speed Al Davis is touted as HOFer; then Ted Thompson must be thought of by that “touter” as an ultra-god-HOFer.
It is interesting that post-2003, drafting top 10 most years, notwithstanding all the speedy boys drafted by Davis, one, only one, made a probowl. He was a “slow” guy, yes, Zach Miller a Pac-12 TE with identical combine measurables to Richard Rodgers. Go figure.
In Davis' last 9 years he only drafted two, TWO, that made a probowl: Asamougha and Miller. And these guys were “SLOW;” that is Davis’ legacy to his speed fetish. A wise man learns from his mistakes, but Ted Thompson is a real wise man because he learns from the mistakes of others.
I forget who, but someone said “good is the enemy of great.” But, isn’t it a little sociopathic to reject “good” so that “bad” can be embraced?