Considered as a competitive entity unto itself, the first half of
Saturday night's Bay Area exhibition friendly worked nicely for the
Raiders, the perfect endgame to a nutty week. After 30 minutes, at which
point most starters on both sides were excused for the evening, Oakland
led the 49ers 7-3.
As payback, it worked even better. In scoring their first touchdown, the
Raiders twice victimized San Francisco cornerback Nate Clements. You
might remember Clements from the teams' practice scrimmages last week.
The Raiders do. His taunting cries of "They can't compete with us!"
might still be echoing in the Napa Valley.
At its heart, however, the preseason is less about how you do and more
about how you play. So count Saturday's game as one more reason for
Raiders coach Tom Cable to wake up in a cold sweat.
"We got a ton of situations in, which is good," Cable said after the
game (a 21-20 49ers victory for the obsessively detail-oriented). "We
had some ups and downs. We never got into a rhythm."
The 49ers sure did, and it will account for the Raiders' biggest area of
concern when they review the tape. San Francisco rushed for 144 yards in
the first half (129 by rookie Glen Coffee), finishing with an
eye-popping 275. And they made it look easy.
"There was some poor tackling," Cable said. "We had guys in the hole to
wrap up, and (they) just didn't do it."
Well, yes and no. Coffee had runs of 16, 18, 18 and 35 yards on which he
roared though the point of attack with scarcely a challenge. Hey,
explain it any way you want, it's still a troubling development for a
team that finished 31st among 32 NFL teams in run defense last season,
ahead of only winless Detroit.
"To me, it's just (a matter of) being hard-nosed, tough," Cable said.
Or not.
The second area of concern was a little patch of heaven we like to call
the red zone. This bore watching because of the Raiders' struggles there
during the scrimmages against the 49ers last week — the ones that
inspired Clements' taunt-fest.
Saturday night, the Raiders had seven first-half, first-team snaps in
the red zone. Four came on their third possession, after a 46-yard
interception return by linebacker Ricky Brown, and they went a little
something like this:
A 3-yard pass from quarterback JaMarcus Russell to tight end Zach
Miller. A 1-yard run by Justin Fargas. An incompletion thrown hot, high
and slightly behind Louis Murphy. And an incompletion thrown high to a
covered Murphy in the back of the end zone.
The Raiders got back in the red zone on their next possession, courtesy
of a 22-yard pass-interference penalty on Clements. They didn't stay
long. A 2-yard run and two penalties backed them up to the 26-yard line.
But it all worked out in the end when Clements blew a coverage, leaving
Murphy alone to snag Russell's touchdown pass.
Russell's numbers — 7-of-11, 76 yards, 114.2 passer rating — look better
on paper than they did on grass. He wasn't accurate enough, often
enough. Then there was the third-and-six play on which he tripped while
dropping back and was touched down for a sack.
"You can't be good if you shoot yourself in the foot," Russell said.
All things considered, the effort fell somewhere between nightmare come
to life and suitable for framing. Which seemed to be the way Cable had
it figured.
"Coming in (after the first half) I felt like we'd left 21 points on the
field," he said. "I'm not really pleased. When you leave that many
points on the field, you expect more.
"I like the effort, I don't like the (lack of) discipline. There are
things to clean up."
