The 1-8 Oakland Raiders are a totally lost cause in 2018, but ownership is stepping up and accepting blame for the disaster.
Mark Davis said after the Raiders’ latest loss to the Los Angeles Chargers that he is ultimately responsible for what happens on and off the field, and thus deserves the criticism for Oakland’s awful season.
“I always look in the mirror, and the buck stops with me,” Davis said, via Paul Gutierrez of ESPN. “Where this team is right now is my fault. We haven’t been able to build a 22-man roster. We haven’t been able to give this team a chance to win because the reconstruction failed. We failed from 2014 on to have a roster right now.”
Davis defended coach Jon Gruden, particularly over his role in the Khalil Mack trade.
“Jon wanted him. Everybody thinks that Jon’s the one who wanted to get rid of him. Jon wanted him badly,” Davis said. “Why wouldn’t you want this guy? Reggie (McKenzie) wanted him badly. And I wanted him badly, too. But, if in fact we were going to give the type of money that we were going to give to him, and we had Derek (Carr) on that type of a (contract), how were we going to go ahead and build this football team, with all the holes that we had?”
It’s somewhat refreshing to see an owner coming out and accepting the blame for an awful season. One has to wonder if he’s trying to take some of the heat off Gruden, his prize recruit who has been widely blamed for how things have gone. Either way, Davis is ultimately correct about the roster construction of the team and how badly they’ve failed to prepare for this moment for the past several years.
