OAKLAND RAIDERS
An enduring team tribute

The Oakland Raiders stout run defense continues to shut down opponents. Photo: Michael Zagaris.

There is no way of knowing for sure now, but there are many things about the 2011 Oakland Raiders that suggest Al Davis, the franchise's iconic patriarch who died on Oct. 8, had an epiphany in recent years about the way he wanted to go out.

The moment of clarity may have come to him something like this: If this is, in fact, my last hurrah as a pillar of unique identity in this great game of professional football, then my final teams are going to have the best of my identity all over them.

In the mid-2000s, Davis struggled to understand and adapt to a changing NFL, not just in terms of tactics, but the kind of passion and loyalty that was so important to him. It may be why the Raiders fell into a deep hole of dysfunction on many levels, and lost at a rate the franchise had never seen under Davis' leadership.

Health issues, too, kept the owner from running the franchise as he had for 40 years — always hands-on, always with a defiant zeal, always knowing what he wanted in every facet of the franchise. For the first time he had to delegate more, and run the team from a distance. It didn't work because he had the wrong people in place, straying and outright resisting his blueprint.

But at some point, perhaps at the 2008 midseason juncture, he fired head coach Lane Kiffin — who he felt was immature, disrespectful and deceitful — and began assembling the pieces of a more focused vision.

In acquiring defensive tackle Richard Seymour, he secured the galvanizing defensive trench warrior who would lead by example to young, swift, talented but unpolished players around him. Seymour came to the Raiders a certified winner, a man with multiple Super Bowl rings as the anchor of the New England Patriots defense, and his impact was immediate.

Tom Cable was given a shot to run the team and the offense after Kiffin was fired, but there wasn't much that could be done to salvage the 2008 season and Cable didn't fare well calling plays in 2009, either. But Davis made two key moves following that season, cutting loose the disaster that was 2006 No. 1 pick JaMarcus Russell, bringing in Jason Campbell to replace him at quarterback and hiring Hue Jackson as his offensive coordinator.

Campbell was lost to the team with a broken collarbone in Week 5, and to save the season, Jackson acquired veteran Carson Palmer from the Cincinnati Bengals, a move Davis surely would have approved of in order to save a promising start in 2011.

The key to refining Campbell's skills was hiring Jackson from the Baltimore Ravens. Almost from the point Jackson was hired and started bringing the long-dormant Raiders offense to life, it was clear Cable's days might be numbered as Oakland's coach, even though he coaxed their first non-losing season in seven years out of them, going 8-8 in 2010.

In Jackson, Davis had an amalgamation of his top coaches: a passionate motivator like John Madden, a tactical firebrand like Jon Gruden, an introspective thinker like Tom Flores and a man presenting able diversity to the head-coaching profession like Art Shell.

Jackson's work as offensive coordinator was remarkable. The Raiders scored twice as many points as they did in 2009, when Cable was in charge, and they finished fourth in the NFL in scoring. They also went 6-0 against division opponents, albeit 2-8 against everybody else.

For the first time in three seasons, through Jackson's schemes, the Raiders were getting their money's worth with talented tailbacks Darren McFadden and Michael Bush. They developed a more sophisticated passing attack. What's more, Jackson was the total coach, often challenging the defense to stop his offensive schemes in practice.

When Davis saw what he had in Jackson, making the coaching switch couldn't be difficult. And early in 2011, despite a lockout that prevented the Raiders from making many offseason moves, the team hit the ground running, winning at Denver in its opener, losing a narrow shootout at Buffalo and coming home for an emotional home-opening victory over the New York Jets.

What Jackson started a year ago has continued to flourish, despite the loss of tight end Zack Miller, guard Robert Gallery and cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha. Davis' first-round placekicker, Sebastian Janikowski, is having the best year of a solid career so far, matching the NFL's longest field goal in history at 63 yards. Darrius Heyward-Bey, Davis' controversial first-round pick at wide receiver in 2009, is showing signs of a breakout. For the second year in a row, a rookie receiver is making the league take notice. Last year it was Jacoby Ford, this year Denarius Moore.

Davis' final vision is an unfinished work, and it remains to be seen how it will all play out without the franchise's commander-in-chief providing tough decision-making and sage advice. But the Raiders responded to Davis' death with an emotional, hard-fought 25-20 victory at Houston to go to 4-2 for the first time in eight years.

It had to please Davis that in the final two home games he personally attended, the Raiders sold out the Oakland Coliseum just as they did routinely during the 1970s. The momentum of the past two seasons' moves have been obvious. It's a shame he won't be able to see the full flowering of the seeds he sowed, but perhaps he saw enough to understand the franchise he loved so dearly might be on its way back to greatness.

If so, Al Davis died a happy, fulfilled man.