NFL team the Oakland Raiders haven’t tasted Super Bowl glory since 1983. Adding insult to that embarrassing barren spell, on Monday the franchise was named the least desirable team to play for in the NFL.
The dubious accolade comes courtesy of an NFL Nation Confidential survey posed to 100-plus players on the following question: "The only way I'd play for [team name] is if they doubled my salary."
Of the 82 recipients that responded to the survey, the Raiders topped the charts with 23 percent of the vote. The Buffalo Bills were a close second at 19 percent, the Cleveland Browns finished third with 16 percent, the Jacksonville Jaguars came in fourth at 9 percent and the Green Bay Packers rounded off a morbid top five on 6 percent.
The Raiders have endured 11 consecutive years without a winning record. The franchise has not reached the postseason since 2002, and the team has finished with a record of 4-12 in each of the last two seasons.
Indeed, the Raiders have not bettered their ‘02 record of 8-8 in more than a decade; the franchise has become something of a byword for instability in the NFL.
Of course, no high-flying NFL star lusts after the opportunity to ply his trade with an underperforming franchise like the Raiders. However, Oakland’s undesirability seems to be made more pointed due to the chronic instability that has characterized the team’s running over the past decade.
Even now, for example, doubts persist over where the team will be located next season.
Raiders owner Mark Davis has made clear his displeasure with the franchise’s sharing arrangement with the Oakland Athletics in the O.co Coliseum.
The Raiders’ lease with the stadium ownership expires at the end of the 2014-15 season, and the San Antonio Express-News revealed in July that Davis traveled to Texas and met with several San Antonio council officials to discuss the possibility of relocating at the end of the current campaign.
As Bill Williamson pointed out on ESPN, though, one should be leery about reading too much into the results of a confidential poll. The reality of professional sports is that if a franchise offers good contracts, good players will sign, regardless of the team’s win-loss record.
Williamson noted that in spite of the Raiders’ poor recent record, they still managed to acquire Justin Tuck and LaMarr Woodley, among others this season. Tuck and Woodley “are guys with Super Bowl rings,” Williamson observed.
“They went to the Raiders because they were paid well.”
Thus, while the poll does not reflect well on the Raiders’ current standing in the NFL, it hardly precludes the franchise from recruiting the high-quality talent that is needed for the team to progress.
After all, no player questioned said that they would never go to the Raiders; they just stated that they would need to be paid more in order to do so.
from Bleacher Report http://ift.tt/1qpOQlW
via IFTTT August 26, 2014 at 08:56AM
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