Hue Jackson broke up our Oakland Raider lockout tedium recently with a mouth watering interview. Hue's interviews have a way of winding up less interview and more motivational speeches. He is always a welcome addition to Pirate Booty. He is not alone.
Amy Trask is gaining more national attention; we have the mandated Nnamdi rumor; I rip on Tim Tebow, and the NFL owners are stealthily meeting to talk about super-secret stuff. Jump over for the booty....
Raiders Grab Bag O' Booty
Hue Jackson Talks to NFL.com
Brhynno and I discussed yesterday how listening to Hue Jackson talk winds results in us tackling items in our house (not yet loved ones). I already have a hard time distinguishing Tom Cable from Joe Bugel.
NFL.com news: Jackson resurrecting old-school Raiders themes
I spent two days with Raiders players last week and they worked hard. It wasn't simply seven-on-seven drills. One thing that really stood out in watching them was how young the brunt of the guys on the team were. It was really apparent when Falcons players took the same high school practice field after the Raiders. Atlanta has a more veteran team and its players were all business. Sustained success breeds that swagger. They got on the field, did what they had to do -- efficiently -- and kept it moving.
I transcribe most of the interview in the article below:
Raiders Coach Hue Jackson "We are Going to Chase Perfection" - Silver And Black Pride
Hue Jackson speaks, and I want football. Highlights from the coach's recent interview.
Amy Trask Making the Headlines
Amy Trask is a female trail blazer in the NFL. Amy Trask has unprecedented say for a women in the NFL world. The late Georgia Frontiere owned the Rams, but she let others make most of the football and business decisions She has been regarded as the most powerful women in sports and certainly in football. And during the lockout she is making many of her male contemporaries look bad:
Faces of lockout: Raiders chief executive - AFC West Blog - ESPN
Thus, Trask is ensuring her employees are not standing by idly, waiting for the lockout to end. The Raiders are being aggressive as they can be during the lockout.
This next article may teach you more about building a house than football, but it is about the Raiders.
Five players forming the foundation for Raider success | June
People talk about getting talent on a team to make it better. But that is not what creates a winner. A winner is built from the ground up. A team is like a structure. And with any structure, you must start with a foundation. After you have built that foundation, you add the framework. This process is the hardest work of all. And it is the work that goes mostly unnoticed.
Um...every team has a foundation. Call me crazy, but one of the key ingredients should be talent.
Previously on Silver and Black Pride
The Oakland Raiders May Have Had Their Last TV Blackout - Silver And Black Pride
The league may be altering the blackout rule
Raiders Free Agency
Today's obligatory Nnamdi news comes from someone else giving their obligatory Nnamdi news. This is like a serpent eating its tale. Anyway, Texan fans don't seem too optimistic.
McClain: Texans '20-80' To Sign Nnamdi Asomugha - SB Nation Houston
Either way, Nnamdi is still unlikely to be a Texan, we still don’t have an actual NFL season, and Bob McNair will likely not open up the vault for a free agent out of fear of setting the market. Got it? Great. I’ll see you back here next week so we can pretend that there is news to report on when it comes to the Texans.
I don't know if the Raiders have any intention of pursuing Eric Weddle in free agency, but I think he may be the best fit in 2011 for free safety. He may also get way overpaid, which would make him a bad option. Either way, it is not a good scenario for the Chargers.
ProFootballWeekly.com - Jaguars could target Chargers S Weddle in free agency
We hear that GM Gene Smith has targeted 2-4 players, though who specifically, he has kept close to the vest for obvious reasons. Safety, linebacker and defensive end are all areas where upgrades are needed, and a popular name that we are hearing is Chargers FS Eric Weddle.
Around the AFC West
Those cute little Chargers are so adorable....
Looking at the Chargers worst moments since 1987 | ProFootballTalk
The team-by-team tour of the worst moments for each NFL franchise since the last work stoppage took us today to sunny (we assume) San Diego, where the local football team has from time to time performed just well enough to rip out the hearts of the fan base.
Chiefs fans have always been a little slow. Apparently they are just now figuring out this lockout thing is frustrating.
Chiefs fans feel frustrated with NFL labor impasse - KansasCity.com
"They can’t even tell me whether there’s going to be a season this year. Why do I want to go out and buy a jersey? And do I really want to spend the money that ends up going back to the Chiefs or the NFL? I don’t know. It’s like I’m in a real holding pattern trying to figure out what to do."
I kid; I kid. That is actually a decent article with a collection of quotes and feelings from fans about the frustrations of this crazy and powerless situation we are in.
Tim Tebow disgusts me. He literally makes me want to vomit on my shoes. Things like this do not help:
Tim Tebow: The life of the QB so far - USATODAY.com Photos
At just 23, Tebow has released a memoir that chronicles his life from birth in the Philippines to his arrival in the NFL.
People are so willing to place this guy on a pedestal, and he in turn seems so willing to buy into it. He is a walking testament to elitism that comes with living in the virtues of accepted and mainstream dogma. ...Well, that and he is a Bronco. There are few players that I want to fail more than Tebow just so I can stop hearing about him.
Around the Lockout
The lockout has gone too far this time:
Fantasy football business starting to feel pain from NFL lockout - USATODAY.com
ESPN became the first major media company to cancel an annual preseason fantasy preview magazine. The magazine normally would have hit newsstands this month.
Here's too hoping the football in 2011 isn't a fantasy. Maybe this next story will bear lockout resolving fruit?
NFL Lockout: Owners Meet Near Chicago As Court Date Looms - SBNation.com
There’s no way of telling whether it brings us any closer to seeing pro football any time in the next three months, but a group of influential NFL owners and perhaps Commissioner Roger Goodell gathered near Chicago. ...The meeting was rather hush-hush, and most of the participants tried to keep their plans to themselves. But some attempts at discretion were more successful than others.
In my head this meeting takes place in the super best friends secret chamber, and the owners had to say "fidelio" to enter. Here's more on the secret meetings:
Making sense of the not-so-secret ownership meeting | ProFootballTalk
For starters, the various owners who reportedly attended — Pats owner Robert Kraft, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, and Panthers owner Jerry Richardson — are members of the team negotiating a new labor deal.Given that the full ownership met last week in Indianapolis and in light of the requirement that at least 24 of them must approve any offers made to the players, it could be that the owners voted in Indy to give Goodell and the negotiating team a new ceiling of authority, and that the negotiating team met separately to come up with a plan for using it once mediation resumes in six days.
I am not sure that I like the thought of Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft being two-thirds of the negotiating team. Their two teams are hauling in more many than any of the others. I do not see these guys being motivated to negotiate with the best interest of the long-term health of the league as much as they will for their own interests.
This next story has possibilities to be amazingly entertaining:
New York Jets Tackle Puts NFL Lockout Life on YouTube | WebProNews
"I thought it would be awesome to give people, kind of like a reality show, a chance to see what we do other than on the fields," Sione Pouha . "A lot of people just see us on Sundays and obviously that’s what we get paid to do, but we have adventures and have families and take our kids to school and do homework and that sort of stuff."
The problem is that the players whose life would be really entertaining know better than to put said entertainment up for public consumption.