Forget Bush; Raiders signed Lanyae Miller

Watched him play over here in Fresno. He’s a decent back, nothing special but he plays hard every down. Good workman like ethic. He backed up Ryan Matthews for a time over here. He’s been around some decent football. Good pick up in terms of depth. No replacement for Bush though, Bush is still a better back.

Another versitile back that can man the FB position also looking at Rashawn Jackson I say tag Branch and let him play for a big contract while we groom a replacement if he walks and let our under the radar players hungryc for their shot at relevance rather than a pay check provide us a little spark while we rebuild with youth like our relatively young coaching staff. Please do not pay Bush big bucks. I know he thinks he is a feature back and some might, but to me this season proved other wise. He is a good situational back who can help in pass catching, but not pass blocking. I’m sorry but that game where he could not punch it home on the one three times cancelled his franchise tag.

Obviously we need the bpa, and any member of any staff will tell you they do that regardless.

The guy is a beast, no doubt….and you’ve got McFadden coming back as well. Am a Cincy fan and am interested in our perspective……

but I agree it’s looking more and more like McKenzie will go the route similar to that of how they approached it in GB and look for young and hungry guys who come cheap and are looking to earn money.

For every hundred guys like this kid who come into the league, maybe 15 make teams and get time, and maybe 3 become guys like Mike Bush. If you only look at statistical performances you’ll miss that this guy carried us through a tough stretch of McFaddenless schedule and we became extremely more one dimensional as the season progressed without a spell back, without the ability to take the extra guy out of the box, and without Ford/Moore to make the defense respect the flats and perimeter enough to not just wait for Mike Bush all the time.

Michael Bush is a special talent with rare hands and blocking ability and we’ll miss him if he goes… maybe more than we will McFadden, whom I love when he’s playing, but it’s only half the time. MB played sixteen games.

In a perfect world It would be nice to get Michael Bush back and have him and McFadden through out the season working in tandem to put a stomping on the rest of the league. I don’t know if the Raiders can do that, hope so. Lanyae is probably not the answer for sure.

I would like to see a college back up get a burr under his saddle and just take off and show some true talent that has not been seen or expected. It does happen, look at Arian Foster on the Texans, he was on the practice squad when he figured out that practice squad guys can make the team and that was all it took for him to get the motivation to make the team, Look at Sterling Moore, a walk on undrafted free agent that our HC could not see as a talented player who didn’t give up and ended up as a starting rookie in the Superbowl.

My hope is that our new staff has the ability to see possible talented players and not see them as just a backup in college. Lanyae has not given me any reason to believe he is going to be great or even good, but I would say he has the speed and size to show some hope. Time will tell

the better, competition is a great thing in training camp. I hope we retain Bush, but we need serious depth with McFadden being injured so often.

Reggie shouldn’t have a problem finding a power RB if the Raiders lose Bush. There’s always some good RB’s found in the later rounds, even undrafted ones. Well see how good Reggie is at being a talent evaluator with the Raiders lack of draft picks.

They say RB’s are a dime a dozen now days, and just about any RB can look good behind the right offensive line. Raiders have a pretty damn good offensive line when it comes to the run, so lets see if Reggie can strike gold with only spending a dime on a RB. If Reggie can’t? He’s not cracked up to be what has been advertised. And if he’s smart, he won’t pay Bush big money.

Raiders better focus in the defense first and foremost. Getting a replacement for Bush shouldn’t be hard to do in today’s NFL.