After Tuesday’s press conference in which Raiders owner Al Davis proved that he still has a 100-mph fastball — and that he’s willing to throw it at the head of anyone whom he thinks deserves it — Davis talked off-camera with the members of the media who attending the session.
He made several interesting disclosures, some of which had only been rumored in the past. Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News has many of the quotes.
Of former head coach Lane Kiffin, Davis said that he “conned me like he conned all you people.”
Davis also made other disclosures that had only been rumored in the past. For example, he said that Lane Kiffin, who didn’t want to select quarterback JaMarcus Russell with the first overall pick in the 2007 draft, at one point wanted to take Brady Quinn. This meshes with our report that the Raiders were negotiating with Quinn’s agent prior to the draft — and proves that Quinn would have been in a much better situation than he is now if he’d merely instructed his agent to get a deal done.
As to receiver Randy Moss, Davis said that Kiffin and his staff didn’t want him. Davis also said that Packers G.M. Ted Thompson “thought [Moss] couldn’t run any more.” And Davis took a shot at his arch-rivals from the AFC West: “Even Denver, where they’ll take anybody, turned [Moss] down.”
Davis also accused the Patriots of “tampering” with Moss: “But what’s his name knew he could run, he’s a friend of Belichick’s. Mike Lombardi. Mike sold what’s his name, Belichick, on the idea that he could run. They tampered with him. I remember Bob Kraft saying that he had to look him in the eye and all that. They went down and worked him out, he could run. He’s their team, of course, with the quarterback.”
Regarding Lombardi, a former Raiders exec who sued the team after he was fired in order to get a buyout of a contract that he didn’t have and who is now teeing off on Davis whenever he can, Davis said publicly what many league insiders have told us privately. “Mike Lombardi has been fired from every job he’s had,” Davis said. “Every job. He can’t get a job. Last year he was fired from a job he was working for nothing. He was fired from Denver.”
Davis also confirmed that Lombardi was the in-house mole who was bad-mouthing former coach Art Shell, which prompted Shell’s head to nearly explode at a press conference two years ago. “[H]e was bad to Shell,” Davis said of Lombardi. “Not necessary. You can’t get that in an organization, somebody in the organization bad-mouthing the coach.”
Davis hinted that he has been talking to a “local” guy who might join the team in an executive role after the season.
As to former Raiders coach Mike Shanahan, whom Davis fired 19 years ago after four regular-season games, Davis was brutally candid: “When Shanahan left me, he went to Denver. He was there for about four or five years as an assistant and they fired him for insubordination. Dan Reeves and he had a big battle. He went to the 49ers and he learned their style of football and when Dan Reeves failed in Denver, the first guy they had was Wade Phillips, I think . . . then he brought Shanahan back. And Shanahan had success. But Shanahan has an asterisk next to those two Super Bowls, because they were caught cheating.”
As to former Raiders coach Norv Turner, Davis acknowledged that he possibly fired him too quickly. “Norv Turner does a good job as a coordinator and he’s doing a good job as a head coach. Now let’s see what he does. He’s got a good team. Let’s see what he does. I might have been impetuous with him. But he was a good guy.”
As to former Raiders coach Jon Gruden, Davis suggested that the 2001 playoff loss to the Patriots doomed the relationship. “The Tuck Game was the undoing of a lot of things,” Davis said.
It was a remarkable post-script to what was a memorable day. A man whom many believed had lost some of his faculties emerged to let us all know that he’s still got it, and that he’s still committed to making the Raiders competitive.
“You’re going to have to have me around for a while,” Davis said. “My mother, you know, she lived a long time, 103.”