The Oakland Raiders posted a super-vicious Raiders diss quote in their locker room this week for, literally, some motivational bulletin board material to fire up the players to face the San Diego Chargers.
Comcast Sportsnet reports of a sign with a quote from former NFL coach Marty Schottenheimer, one-time coach of the AFC West Chiefs and Chargers, from Schottenheimer's Monday Sirius NFL radio show.
Schottenheimer's quote reads as follows: "The one constant you can count on in playing the Raiders is that they don't finish. They don't finish plays and they don't finish games. I always told my players that if they kept playing hard against the Raiders, they would eventually fold. That is why I knew we would always win. That is still the perception around the league today."
Ooh, that insiduous Schottenheimer! That kind of insolence really makes you want to go out and stomp the team he coached from 2002 to 2006!
Except the quote is bogus. Steve Corkran of the Oakland Tribune dug up the actual quote from Monday's broadcast, and reports the real version is much, much less of a Raider-hater than advertised.
Schottenmheimer's actual quote: "Well, from my perspective, you know, I’ve always saw in that football team, (the Raiders) don’t finish plays very well. And I’m not going to sit here and tell you that, you know, that they don’t care, but I do think that losing over an extended period of time produces guys that tend to."
"They don’t finish plays the way you need to finish plays," Marty continues, "And, in the National Football League, it’s all about how you finish whatever it is you’re doing, whether it’s on offense, defense or in the kicking game. And that was always the thing that I felt about the Raiders and why I felt we could always beat them is, that if you just go out and do your job and you do it and commit yourself to doing it for the entire contest, regardless how much time that is, go finish the thing, and they would find a way – I always would tell our players, if you just hang in there with the Raiders, they will find a way in the end to lose themselves."
Sports
There is no "the one constant". Marty never used the verb "fold", He never said, " I knew we would always win," nor did he say, "That is still the perception around the league today."
This is the Raiders' second foray into manufacturing quotes this season. After week two, they distributed a false transcript of Tom Cable's remarks at a press conference regarding a then-brewing quarterback controversy.
Do they think people will not notice? Do they realize that in this day and age, such information can be easily verified by any fool with a dial-up modem?
People, it may not be long before Al Davis is telling us that he can see Russia from his house.
Joe Kukura is a freelance writer who still can't believe that Marty Schottenheimer somehow got a shout-out in an Eminem song.
