It’s a new day for the Las Vegas Raiders, and by that we’re talking about a time with a new head coach, new coaching staff, new veteran players and new rookies starting with No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza.
It’s also apparently the time for a new disposition and personality around the storied franchise.
“I think we just have a professional group of players, you know?” coach Klint Kubiak told reporters on Monday. “They care about getting better.”
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And this:
“We don’t have any turds,” Kubiak pointed out. “We got guys that want to be here. that want to win, that want to change this place. I’m really, really happy with that.”
This is good. It’s often good when a football team has no, using Kubiak’s word, “turds.”
But aside from it being a good thing, it’s kind of a different thing for the Raiders.
There was a time, you see, mostly starting in the rollicking 1960s, through the rocking 1970s, and probably all the way through to the early 2000s, when the Raiders had some, shall we say, questionable guys.
They were a team that boasted a roster with renegades. And owner Al Davis, who once sued the NFL and moved the franchise multiple times to the chagrin of his fellow owners, embraced the outlaw image.
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This is a franchise that had a starting safety named Jack Tatum. His playing style led to him being nicknamed “The Assassin,” which made him quite polarizing, especially after one of his hits left receiver Darryl Stingley paralyzed.
“I like to believe that my best hits border on felonious assault,” Tatum wrote in his autobiography.
This franchise didn’t draft John Matuszak, but Davis found the boundary-pushing, difficult-to-coach individualist a perfect fit for the Raiders.
Matuszak struggled with alcohol and drug use throughout and after his playing career. In his autobiography, he openly admitted using prescription painkillers, cocaine and steroids while in the NFL.
And yet he was a key defensive lineman on Oakland’s Super Bowl XI and Super Bowl XV champions.
There were others, of course.
Warren Wells was one of the AFL’s most explosive wide receivers in the mid-to-late 1960s — until his career was derailed by a rape conviction that sent him to prison.
Even the team’s The Autumn Wind anthem — adopted from an NFL Films feature on the Raiders — is an embrace of the franchise’s outlaw reputation.
The Autumn Wind is a Raider,
Pillaging just for fun.
He’ll knock you ’round and upside down,
And laugh when he’s conquered and won.”
For the record, the Raiders of this century have not enjoyed anything close to the success those teams of yesteryear authored. But the latter-day Raiders also had, Kubiak vocabulary here, turds.
Cornerback Damon Arnette lasted only two seasons with the club until weapons and drug-related charges made him impossible to keep. The former first-round pick, bouncing around the NFL and other leagues, is a free agent.
Henry Ruggs III wasn’t a “turd” in the classic sense of the NFL meaning. But he made tragic decisions that led him to drive drunk, killing a woman and her dog in a fiery crash years ago.
There are also more recent players such as Charles Snowden and Rodric Teamer who were arrested on charges of DUI, significant enough that the Raiders quickly cut them.
And there was Chandler Jones, who was arrested multiple times in 2023 on charges of violating domestic violence protective orders. Jones was eventually placed on the non-football illness list for what club sources described as “concerning” behavior.
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But this Raiders team is apparently different.
Born-again Christian Kirk Cousins is the presumptive starting quarterback. Mendoza has such a polished public personality it borders on implausible. Maxx Crosby is one aggressive dude on the field, but off the field those videos of him and his little girl will melt your heart.
These Raiders apparently don’t have the image of those fateful Autumn Wind clubs. And Klint Kubiak likes it.
