I get the feeling that if you put Hue Jackson in a room with anyone that when that person leaves said room they will be leaving with a lot of whatever it is Hue is selling. Case in point, one Michael Silver. For someone from the Bay Area and with the last name of Silver, Senor Michael has had harsh words for our beloved pirate franchise. It reached a point that the Raiders have denied Silver access to the press box.
Well, after getting to know Hue Jackson, it appears Silver may be back on the pirate ship now. Silver:
I haven’t made any formal predictions yet for the 2011 season, largely because my editor hasn’t forced me to, but I’m going to throw one out there before the preseason games begin: The Raiders will win their division and, for the first time since Gruden’s team lost to the Ravens at home in January 2001, they’re going back to the AFC championship game, too.
Since he picked the Raiders to go to the Championship game, I'll forgive the fact that he forgot that the Raiders went to the AFC Championship game after 2001.
That is one bold prediction. I hope he is right. It is also part of good. Among other things, Silver talks about the shared roots of Hue Jackson and Jon Gruden.
“Jon Gruden raised me as a coach,” says Jackson, who shared an office with Gruden in 1989 when they were assistants at University of the Pacific, Jackson’s alma mater. “You’ve got to understand, a lot of my belief system stems from him. A lot of my quirkiness, my energy and my understanding of Xs and Os come because I shared an office with a guy with so much passion, who showed me how to put that passion toward something I love.”
Says Gruden: “I’ll tell you what a good job Hue and I did – UOP dropped football [in 1995].”