Former Las Vegas Raiders quarterback JaMarcus Russell recently wrote his own tell-all article via the Player’s Tribune. In it, he discusses several things. Among them, he goes into detail about what transpired between him and his Raiders coaches.
All they care about is winning. And I wasn’t winning.
By 2009, it was clear that Russell wasn’t going to live up to the hype of being the first overall pick. Looking back, it was an impossible situation for the former LSU Tiger. The Raiders, at that time, were the most dysfunctional organization in football. In hindsight, Al Davis’s health had declined, and he shouldn’t have been running the team by then, much less making personnel decisions. On the other hand, his hand-picked head coach, Lane Kiffin, didn’t make things easier for Davis. The pair couldn’t agree on anything, and the decision to pick Russell sealed Kiffin’s fate from the outset back in 2007. That’s the chaos that Russell walked into, so perhaps it shouldn’t surprise folks that he floundered in that environment.
“None of those coaches wanted me in the first place. Only Al Davis wanted me. That’s on record. Those coaches didn’t give a damn about me — not as a player, and damn sure not as a person.”
Russell isn’t lying when he says only the late Davis wanted him. The former coach, Kiffin, has been on record saying he wanted Calvin Johnson with the Raiders’ pick. Nevertheless, it must’ve been an impossible situation for Russell to know that the coaching staff that would be responsible for his development wanted nothing to do with him on any level, as Russell stated.
The Raiders were a disaster during those years
That entire run for the Raiders was a disaster. After two years in the league, Russell headed into the 2009 season (his third) with Tom Cable as head coach, Ted Tollner as passing game coordinator, and Paul Hackett as the quarterback’s coach. Russell didn’t mince words regarding that particular group of coaches. In fact, he detailed the event that led to the end of his career with the Raiders.
“That whole 2009 season was a mess. Finally, it got to a breaking point. We’re sitting in the QB room one day going over the film after a loss, and my quarterback coach starts up. He’s motherfucking me, calling me a son of a bitch and whatnot.”
After being on the receiving end of that tirade, Russell defended himself. He made it clear that no one spoke to him like that, not even his dad or mom. Russell laid it all out, either they would speak to each other with respect, or they could simply exchange pleasantries, as Hackett did. Funny enough, Russell snapped after Hackett changed his tone to a friendlier degree, albeit with a smirk. He broke a table, yelled that that is how he wanted to be talked to from now on, but as Russell mentions, he never started a football game again. Just like that, it was over.
[pickup_prop id=”21986″]
*Top Photo: Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News
