Yes, I’m aware that Monty already posted our update for this week. However, I found an article on Football Outsiders concerning JaMarcus Russell’s poor completion percentage this season that I had to link to. I do not mean to rub salt in Monty’s wounds with this. (For what it’s worth, he picked the Detroit Tigers to win the AL Central before the season and I called him an idiot. While they didn’t technically win, he would have destroyed me in a Tigers/Indians bet. Yes…I liked the Indians. I will now crawl into my baseball hole.) Anyway, click on this link and scroll to the bottom third of the page. The headline for the story is An Incomplete Failure. Seriously, Russell is only completing 39.8% of his passes. That is a staggeringly low number.

If that weren’t bad enough, Russell’s backups are nothing to write home about. Bruce Gradkowski and Charlie Frye round out the worst quarterbacking trio in the NFL, possibly the worst of the modern NFL era. The worst part of the quarterbacking situation is that the Raiders cut Jeff Garcia just days before the season began. According to Tom Cable, Garcia asked to be cut when it became apparent that Russell was going to be the starter. Now, Garcia is taking shots at the Raiders and validating everyone’s true feelings about the Raiders.  The real question here is: would Jeff Garcia really be a difference maker for the Raiders? It’s tough to say, Garcia certainly would not (can not) play any worse than Russell has this season. The Raiders do have a lot of talent in the backfield with Darren McFadden, Justin Fargas, and Michael Bush; but it’s easy to game plan against them when the Raiders have such an incompetent quarterback. At receiver, the Raiders are a mess. Not only are the Raiders’ wide receivers inexperienced, but they have problems staying upright. Seriously, this is a problem amongst people that actually watch the Raiders games (someone has to, right?). This is an exchange from a recent article featured on Football Outsiders:

Bill Barnwell: What hurts JaMarcus Russell is that Darrius Heyward-Bey can’t stay upright. It’s not just that he falls down when he gets hit. He falls down when he’s brushed by a corner. On plays where other receivers are being targeted and Heyward-Bey appears in the background, he’s tipping over. I don’t know if he did this in college, but he’s terrible.

Mike Tanier: Heyward-Bey sometimes stays upright long enough to drop the few accurate passes. And you don’t give that Murphy kid enough credit for his ability to fall over.

This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to anyone…the Raiders are a bad offensive football team. While Jeff Garcia wouldn’t be able to ensure that Darrius Heyward-Bey and Louis Murphy stay upright and start catching passes, there is no statistical evidence suggesting Garcia would be anywhere near as bad as Russell. Even though he did not start the season as the starter, Garcia had a pretty successful statistical year with the Bucs in 2008.  As a matter of fact, since 2006 Garcia has been a pretty effective quarterback when given playing time.

Jeff Garcia Since 2006
Year	Yards	TDs	Comp Pct	Rating
2008	2,712	12	64.9%	90.2
2007	2,440	13	63.9%	94.6
2006	1,309	10	61.7%	95.8

What does this mean? Even though Garcia isn’t the quarterback he used to be, and he doesn’t have the physical skills of Russell, he can still be an effective quarterback in the NFL. I don’t want to suggest that Garcia should be a starting quarterback in the NFL. He’s the type of guy you can trust to win games when a starter gets injured, however. Or, in the case  of the Raiders, when your starter is historically awful. Garcia would act as a stopgap for Oakland, but it’s clear that this inept offense would be a least a little better under Garcia.

What is interesting about the Raiders is that their defense isn’t all that bad this season. Using advanced statistics, the Raiders rank 14th in the league defensively. Most of the Raiders success defensively can likely be placed on the addition of Richard Seymour and the stellar play of Nnamdi “Awesome”-ugha (Yes, I just made up an awful nickname for the best cornerback in the league. It’s not very original either.). The fact is, Garcia is the type of quarterback that is able to succeed with a decent defense. He doesn’t make many mistakes as a quarterback. When your defense is performing, this tends to lead to closer games, which leads to more chances for the Raiders to actually win those games.

In the last two weeks, the Raiders have been outscored 52-9. Hell, Russell hasn’t throw a touchdown since week 1. Even though they managed to win the week 2 game against Kansas City, Russell went 7-24, for 109 yards, and 0 touchdowns. This is the same defense that allowed Joe Flacco and Kevin Kolb to throw for 300+ yards, and managed to hold Eli Manning to a measly 292 yards. In other words, Kansas City’s defense has been less than stellar in 2009. We aren’t breaking any new ground here, but it has to be excruciating to be a Raiders fan right now.

What do you think of The Bet, JaMarcus Russell, or the Raiders in general? Let us know in the comments.

Fans of the Raiders (if there are any of you left), we would love to hear your thoughts and stories about both Russell and the Raiders. In order to spice up our posts concerning The Bet, we want to hear your stories about the team. Take this as an opportunity to vent, tell us we suck, etc. The best e-mails and responses will be used in future posts concerning The Bet.