Raiders Showing Penalty Progress

Any Oakland Raiders fans looking for a silver lining in this black season, Jerry McDonald of the Oakland Tribune may have it for you.

The Raiders are bucking their historical trend, and this season they're one of the least-penalized teams in the NFL.

McDonald busts the numbers in the Oakland Tribune and notes that the Raiders are 21st in the NFL in the dubious category of overall yards penalized. That's one department where the Raiders are used to being Number One.

"Projected through 16 games," McDonald writes, "the Raiders would have 94 penalties for a scant 713 yards at the end of the season."

And that would give the Raiders their fewest penalties since 1990, back in the previous Art Shell era when they were the Los Angeles Raiders.

So take heart Raiders fans, your team is improving drastically in one regard. Maybe having a coach who is able to steadfastly avoid being charged by authorities is rubbing off on them in the right way.

Joe Kukura is a freelance writer who thinks Jerry McDonald's Twitter wisecrack yesterday was the funniest Bay Bridge joke he's heard all week.

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