After the 3rd day of Raiders minicamp: Quick hits from last minicamp practice - Inside the Oakland Raiders - A look inside the world of the highly classified Oakland Raiders from the writers of Bay Area News Group If he didn't look like a 9 mil. dollar QB, he probably won't be there. They'll be after him to restructure and take a big pay cut, he says he won't (he has to say that, or just roll over and take the cut now). He may want out of the Oakland situation now.
If I were the Raiders, I'd try to nail him on substance abuse so Russell would get suspended and I wouldn't have to pay him for those games. I'd try to entrap him by leaving all that stuff lying around him and once he started smoking, bust down the door and shout in triumph, "Gotcha!" I'm not a fan of Lane Kiffin, but the Raiders have been pretty weasley in trying to get out of paying his contract. And, Russell has been much worse than Kiffin ever could have been so I'm surprised they haven't attempted anything about Russell yet. And, it bears repeating, the Raiders are just stupid to even let Russell out on the practive field. It wouldn't surprise me if Russell trys to get himself injured or fakes an injury so the Raiders have to pay him 9.45M even if they cut him. Russell has that look about him that he doesn't care if he plays or not; all he wants is his money.
I almost went there with the fake injury angle. I don't think he could get away with that as medical examiners would have to validate it's a real injury. Now he could intentionally hurt himself, I just don't know how badly you have to hurt yourself to qualify to get paid. What type injury could you inflict upon yourself that you could actually carry out? Nobody will pay him more than league minimum if he is cut, so he will essentially lose 9 million if he isn't injured or doesn't make the team. I tend to doubt he has managed his money wisely up til this point and we'll probably hear how he owes people all kinds of money in a year or 2 (ala Mike Vick).
Ten yard penalty for piling on: Jon Ritchie, a former Raider who didn't play with Russell, said he heard that Russell fell asleep in meetings. Former teammate Dominic Rhodes verifed that, and it also came out the Russell would sometimes take breaks from meetings, forget to come back and need to be fetched. "I don't think he has the mindset to be great," Rhodes said. Read more: SFGate: Raiders Silver and Black Blog : Ex-teammates rip JaMarcus
He is a domer looking for any reason to rank on Russell because he humiliated his team, coach and QB - all of which have proven to suck anyway. He sucks enough to make up crap about Russell trying to fake an injury. So what's your excuse?
Sure, faking an injury is pretty shady. But, then again, its also shady for essentially stealing 40M dollars for basically doing nothing- for missing meetings, for falling asleep in meetings, for asking for breaks during a meeting so he could sneak off to take a nap, for missing end of year meeting to go to Vegas, for not studying the playbook, for binge eating and showing up overweight, for not practicing, etc... That's just the tip of the iceberg- when he gets cut, we're going to hear even more about all the stuff Russell pulled. If Jamarcus Russell had no qualms about doing all that, what makes you think he'd suddenly think that it would be wrong to accept more money for doing nothing again if he faked an injury? He showed no work ethic, no self-respect. So, its okay to skip meetings and not care, but its verbotem to fake an injury? JR is all about the money. Once he signed that contract, he stopped caring or working. The Raiders offered him a chance to stay if he re-negotiated his contract, and he flatl out refused- all he cares about is the money. And, we're talking about 9.45M dollars.
That's hilarious coming from a guy touting Charlie Weis. A man who had a close loss to USC and then bullied the alumni into giving him a multi-million dollar contract renegotiation after just one year. What was you record after he got that deal? And you call Russell a thief? Still want to talk about all the success Quinn is going to have?
