Raiders Owner Mark Davis Is Just Poking the Rubble by Taking the Blame Now

Jon Gruden likes to take "credit" when a play goes bad, or when a strategy fails. Now Mark Davis tells ESPN's Paul Gutierrez the Raiders' absurdly disastrous season and situation is his fault.

Which means what, exactly? Well, nothing, really. The situation is as it is, and neither Davis nor Gruden are going anywhere. This rebuilding-through-devastation is the course they have chosen, and they are committed to it because there is no turning back. You can't un-blow up a building.

Besides, taking blame when there are no consequences is the easiest thing in the world, as long as you don't mind a little Twitter blowback.

All that said, there isn't much else Davis could do. True, he's a little tardy with this, P.R-wise, and he could also have announced this to the world rather than to one guy at a restaurant, especially the explanation about the Khalil Mack trade. It all comes off more as tactical than sincere.

But those are issues for your crisis management class. The point is, the Raiders have run a textbook example of how to lose faith with a devoted audience, and Mark Davis saying it's his fault is sort of beside the point. 

They spent too much time pretending they weren't doing what they are clearly doing. It doesn't change the fact that they're doing it, it just looks bad.

By now, we all get it, and nobody is even trying to hide the truth any more. You can quibble about the details, like the chicken-and-egg argument over whether Mack wouldn't talk to the Raiders or the Raiders wouldn't talk to Mack. You can even, as Davis does, blame the loss to Washington last year when the team couldn't decide whether or not to kneel during the National Anthem as the moment when the team disintegrated. You can even hold your breath until your dog turns blue about Gruden promising a championship at his initial presser and then causing a cave-in six months later.

But Davis' metaphorical knee-taking is mostly therapeutic for him and nobody else. Nobody will see "I always look in the mirror, and the buck stops with me," and say, "Oh, okay. I feel much better now."

He does go on, in fairness, and takes more diffused blame.

"Where this team is right now is my fault. We haven't been able to build a 22-man roster (by the way, rosters are 53 men deep, but why quibble?). We haven't been able to give this team a chance to win because the reconstruction failed. We failed from 2014 on to have a roster right now."

Now that sounds like Reggie McKenzie is being blamed even for the 2016 12-win season, and unless Davis actually is the football mastermind behind the scenes, his taking blame makes no sense at all. It's a public relations exercise . . . which is all they have now anyway.

And the other issue, the one about where they play in 2019 and threat of a seemingly mythical lawsuit from some Oakland politicians who want to make cheap hay at the expense of the Raiders and their own re-elected mayor? Again, what else can he say but this?

"I personally want to play in Oakland," he told Gutierrez. "I absolutely want to play in Oakland. We have a completed lease sitting with the city council, that all they have to do is agree to it and we're here next year. Emotionally, I would say, why would I give them $3 (million), $4 (million), $5 million in rent that they're going to turn around and use to sue me? But, at the same time, if they'll have us, I can't turn on the fans. I can't do it. And this is terrible negotiating I'm doing now. I'm going to get killed. But that's just the way I am. But if in fact it does get ugly and can't be bridged, we do have options."

Again, weeks late, but other than that, okay. Fine. I guess he needed time to say what everyone else was saying weeks ago. If he'd told Gutierrez this weeks ago, maybe it would matter more, but we've now reached the point where all he is really doing is poking at the rubble.

Like everyone else.

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