In most people's eyes, this team is in total disarray and utter chaos with a complete leadership vacuum and a slew of wasted picks. It doesn't matter if most of the Raiders draft picks since 2007 have been starters are solid backups to these media types. Everything the Raiders have done up until the 2010 draft was wrong by the media.
Everyone knows Oakland was expected to take left tackle Bruce Campbell in the first round and when they showed common sense and took appropriate players in the first four rounds with Campbell being the first fourth round pick for the Raiders instead of their first pick overall.
Instead, Oakland was extremely smart and landed Rolando McClain and Lamarr Houston, who will be one of the major steals of this NFL draft considering every team passed on him and some twice. Oakland then topped off their first two picks with another smart pick with Edwin "Jared" Veldheer in the third round, a player most analysts considered a top-five left tackle in a strong draft of tackles.
The Raiders' first two picks of 2009 have been question marks, but both players have been working their tails off to improve on their performance or conditioning issues, i.e Mike Mitchell and his hamstrings or DHB improving his ball-catching skills. Their next two picks became starters and players who they believe could be future stars.
The Raiders have drafted as well as many other teams recently and not until they cut JaMarcus Russell did the team finally lose the anchor that was keeping them from moving forward. Every offseason they had to work on his footwork in camp. It wasn't a one or two offseasons of footwork, it's been consistently practicing footwork in the offseaso...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Oakland Raiders
