Rich Gannon led the Oakland Raiders to a Super Bowl in 2002, and his former team has given him very little to be proud of since. The Raiders have not had a single winning season since they won the AFC Championship more than 11 years ago. On Wednesday, Gannon blasted the team for becoming comfortable with a losing culture.
“It’s a product of their culture and the environment that has existed for years, because you let things go, you let things slide,” Gannon said on his SiriusXM NFL radio show, as transcribed by CSNBayArea.com. “You don’t detail your work. You don’t have the high degree of professionalism, and accountability in the building. And that’s a problem.
“You don’t have a player that’s willing to stand up in front of his peers in the team meeting and say, ‘This is BS. We’re not going to do this anymore.’ You don’t have those players. You don’t have a Peyton Manning to stand up in the middle of a Friday practice and say, ‘Nah, uh. Let’s stop the play and do it over. We don’t drop the ball on Friday.'”
Gannon went on for a while, and his entire rant is worth reading. He ripped the Raiders for constantly changing coaches and quarterbacks and not trying to develop a winning team.
“You’re not winning because you have players and coaches and people in the building that have become comfortable with the process of losing,” Gannon said. “It’s okay to lose out there, it’s okay. It’s not a big deal. In other places, it’s simply not tolerated.”
While there has been some speculation that Jon Gruden could return to Oakland, I’m not sure even he could fix the problems the Raiders have. Look no further than the way they fired their last head coach. The Raiders are the definition of a franchise in shambles.
