Raiders' Russell set up for failure

You can follow Charles Robinson on Twitter at @YahooSportsNFL.

Almost 30 months ago, when JaMarcus Russell(notes) was bricking off his status as the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft, the general manager who knew him best was fighting a piercing doubt. Then-Cleveland Browns GM Phil Savage kept looking at the top of the draft – kept hearing the echoes about the Oakland Raiders – and couldn't help but feel uneasiness for a kid he had known for nearly a decade.

Russell needed patience. He needed to be surrounded with talent. Most of all, he needed guidance and stability. And yet, he appeared to be destined for a franchise that was synonymous with none of those things.

Russell has faced a lot of criticism and pressure.

(Kirby Lee/US Presswire)

"When they decided to let [JaMarcus] come out in the draft, you just looked at the top of the board, and it was Oakland, Detroit, and then us in Cleveland," said Savage, who has known Russell since the Raiders quarterback attended one of Savage's Mobile, Ala. football camps at the age of 14. "It was like, man, on one hand it would be a tremendous honor to be the first pick, but is that really the best thing?"

The first quarter of Russell's third NFL season continues to provide the resounding – and painful – answer to that question. When he lines up against the New York Giants this week, he'll be carrying the league's worst completion percentage (39.8), yards per attempt (4.7) and quarterback rating (42.4) of any NFL starter. Its erosion has gotten so bad, Oakland's road games almost seem inviting for the ability to get him away from a fan base that is approaching anarchy during his home starts.

But this is something that we could have seen coming with this franchise, which never seemed to be the right fit for Russell. Savage certainly wasn't alone in his reservations. Indeed, on the eve of the 2007 draft, I wrote that the Raiders had to take Calvin Johnson(notes), and avoid a disaster only slightly less certain than the Bay Area's next monster earthquake. And that opinion was formed before the events of the last two-plus years, when Oakland went on the most ill-advised financial spree since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Al Davis started to look at Lane Kiffin the way Nikita Khrushchev once looked at John F. Kennedy.

It was never a secret that Russell was going to be a player who needed stability and a nurturing environment. As Savage points out now – and other personnel men said in 2007 – the most remarkable part of Russell's growth as a quarterback had just begun during his junior season at LSU. He was a player who needed his senior season in college. And any team willing to take him had to know in lieu of that experience, Russell was going to need consistent coaching, consistent talent, and a team that didn't need him to step in and be a leader.

Instead, he got the Raiders – a franchise that one former high ranking NFL executive described to Yahoo! Sports as "like being on a school bus with a crazy driver. You didn't know where you were going, when it was going to stop, and where you were going to end up. You hear it all the time – people go there and after a few days, they're more interested in how they are going to get out."

You don't hear that every day, an NFL franchise likened to a school bus from "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome." However, that's not to say Russell doesn't deserve a large chunk of the blame. He's clearly had performance-hindering weight issues, and his level of commitment is hardly beyond reproach. That was made clear when former LSU teammate and current Kansas City Chief Dwayne Bowe(notes) came out in September, and relayed to reporters a story of how he recently told Russell that he needed to put in the extra time required to be great.

"I told him he's got to be more [of a leader]," Bowe said. "Not screaming in guys' faces, but going to the side, tell them what they did wrong or afterwards, stay an extra hour or focus to improve your game and he said he's going to start that up."

Let's dissect that statement for a moment. You have Bowe, who was temporarily demoted to third string in August because of his penchant for coasting in practice, giving Russell advice on putting in extra work. And then you had Russell allegedly saying he's "going to start that up". Mind you, this is Russell's third season. And while he's only 24, that's still slightly tardy when it comes to recognizing that you have to work harder and focus more – especially when Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan(notes) has been doing things like having the coaches fax him each week's game plan the day before it is given to the rest of the team. Ryan has been doing that since his first week as a rookie.

And while Oakland's coaching staff has chafed over the comparisons to guys like Ryan and the Baltimore Ravens' Joe Flacco(notes), Russell hasn't needed the accomplishments of his counterparts to facilitate a negative perception. Instead, he's created some of the imagery on his own, starting with his protracted contract holdout as a rookie, his skipping of an ESPN production meeting before a game last season, and his recent penchant for parroting the coaching staff's criticism of his receiving corps for his struggles.

Meanwhile, there has been no shortage of flack coming from other reputable sources. Last weekend, CBS analyst Boomer Esiason reported on NFL Today that Russell has been fined repeatedly for his weight and showing up late for meetings, including skipping one meeting entirely. Then there was former teammate Jeff Garcia(notes), who declared in an interview with Fox Sports Radio that Russell wasn't ready to be a starter. None of which matched the vitriol of former Raiders quarterback Rich Gannon, who criticized Russell's mechanics and production in an interview with Fox Sports Radio.

"I'll say this – I wish that when I was playing that they would have been as lenient with me as they were with this guy," said Gannon, whom the Raiders tried to ban from their facilities prior to Oakland's Week 3 contest against the Denver Broncos. "Honestly, heck, if I ever completed 30 or 40 percent of my passes in a game, they would try to run me out of town, [and] I went to four straight [Pro Bowls]. So I guess things have changed out there. Obviously, they gotta make a change. They won't, because the owner is very involved in that decision as you know. And they feel like this guy is the future of this organization. Right now, he's not playing well. I think, certainly, his weight has been an issue in this whole thing. His footwork is atrocious, and you know, he has a ways to go."

But Savage hears these things about Russell, and he's quick to point out that it takes a village to ruin a quarterback. And there are a variety of factors that have helped spoil a raw but talented player. Among them:

• The owner
Al Davis did Russell no favors when during his firing of Kiffin, he referenced the coach's lack of belief in Russell. That's a fairly unambiguous message that getting behind Russell is a prerequisite for coaching Oakland. And it offers a young quarterback a powerful sense of entitlement that he hasn't quite earned.

• The coaching staff
One of the universal destroyers of quarterbacks is a constant juggling of head coaches, coordinators, play-callers and quarterbacks coaches. Changes year-to-year with key personnel often only serves to hit the reset button on a player's development. As Savage pointed out, "Look at Peyton Manning(notes). He throws 28 interceptions his rookie year and they go 3-13. Who would have known that 11 years later he would have the same coordinator, some of the same coaches and the same system."

• The personnel
Passing game coordinator Ted Tollner has pointed out the issues with Russell's young receivers. The one guy the team signed to be dominant No. 1 wideout, Javon Walker(notes), has contributed little more than bank withdrawals. The last two first-round picks (Darren McFadden(notes) and Darrius Heyward-Bey(notes)) alternate between not being able to hold on to the football, or not being able to catch it. And the offensive line is a one-dimensional running unit on its best days and entirely mediocre on its worst. The only truly proven, injury-free commodity is tight end Zach Miller.

• The culture
You can't say enough about what it's like to play in an organization where there isn't a great deal of discipline, and players consistently say that is lacking once they've gone over the wall and defected to other teams. Garcia said there are players just picking up a paycheck, while DeAngelo Hall(notes) told Yahoo! Sports in the preseason that Oakland is the worst working environment he has ever seen.

"I had no idea what it was like there until I got there," Hall said. "You can't even really describe it. As soon as I got there, I could see right away that it was different. Things like the structure of football, the way you go about preparing and the attitudes and everything – they were just all [messed] up. There wasn't any direction. It was just really a lot of chaos."

• The expectations
Personnel men knew going into the draft that Russell was going to require a lot of polish and discipline. He was by no means a finished product. And things like his weight issue were going to be a constant battle. There is a chance that Davis, a notorious collector of fleet feet and huge arms, simply ignored what was going to be necessary to correctly develop with Russell.

• The scheme
Savage pointed to this as one of the more intriguing realities about Russell's struggles. He watches the Raiders, and while they take shots downfield, it doesn't appear that they are running a "true" pro-style offense. Instead, he sees a coaching staff rooted in more of a West Coast timing system than a vertical scheme.

"Lane Kiffin was the coach at the time they drafted him, and they were running somewhat of a West Coast offense," Savage said. "[Former offensive coordinator] Greg Knapp was a West Coast offense guy. Now [quarterback coach] Paul Hackett is there and he's somewhat of a West Coast offense guy. You just wonder about the philosophies. The owner has a philosophy of stretching the field vertically, and yet the last couple coaches have been West Coast system coaches, where it's based on timing and short to intermediate passes. If you were going to be a heavy play-action team and throwing the ball down the field and playing JaMarcus Russell in the shotgun a lot like they did at LSU, that's a different situation than putting him in a system that requires so much discipline."

Russell has regressed since engineering the Raiders to a pair of season-ending victories last year.

(Chris O'Meara/AP Photo)

Finally, it's worth noting that Russell's uncle Ray – arguably the biggest and most consistent influence in his life – passed away from congestive heart failure in April. Both Savage and two of Russell's former LSU teammates now in the NFL (who both declined to be quoted) said they believe Ray's death has had a severe mental and emotional impact on him. And while it's not known how much that has manifested itself in Russell's discipline and behavior, it is certainly another factor in what has been a maelstrom of circumstances leading to this latest low point.

New York Giants backup David Carr(notes), a former No. 1 pick who went through similar turbulence in Houston, might have summed it up best earlier this week. He said that quarterbacks chosen No. 1 overall are all men of a unique fraternity. Not only do they have the pressure of being the first overall pick and playing the position of quarterback, but they are universally viewed as saviors when they arrive in their respected franchises. And often, that savior status brings with it an unrealistic – and often solitary – view of the quarterback. Peyton and Eli Manning(notes) felt it and survived. Tim Couch(notes) and Carr experienced it and failed. But in every case, all of the players rose and sunk with the pieces around them.

"Every guy has his own story, his own unique set of circumstances," Carr said. " … When you've been there, you definitely know when you're coming across a quarterback [who was the No. 1 overall pick]. When we played the Bengals, I was looking up Carson [Palmer] and we definitely had things to share. Me and Eli sit in the meeting room every day talking about different things that have gone on with us and what happens with being in that situation.

"We all have our different stories."