Written February 1st, 2012<\/p>\n
It started Monday evening, like everything else does these days, on Twitter. First I saw CSNBayArea’s Paul Gutierrez\u2019 tweet saying that the Raiders had offered the offensive coordinator job to Greg Knapp. Hmm, I thought, I wonder how that\u2019s going down with Raider Nation?<\/p>\n
So I searched \u201cKnapp\u201d, and smoke started to slowly seep out of my phone. One tweet after another, \u201cGreg \u2018take a\u2019 Knapp,\u201d \u201cLet\u2019s bring JaMarcus back, too,\u201d \u201cWhat are they doing?\u201d and, of course, \u201cretread.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the radio today, I heard John Lund on 95.7 The Game lay out a pretty detailed analysis of Knapp\u2019s career, including his time with the Raiders, and his conclusion, along with every guest he had on the show from Indy, was that it was a pretty good hire. What did his partner, Mychael Urban, think? \u201cHe\u2019s a retread, John. I don\u2019t like retreads.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I thought I\u2019d try to help calm everybody down. First of all, what\u2019s a retread in coaching? Someone who, despite a lack of success, continues to be hired to coaching positions, usually head coaching positions. Greg Knapp has been an assistant coach in the NFL for over 20 years. The Raiders years were\u00a0 easily the least distinguished of his career, but you can hardly say that he hasn\u2019t been successful. He has coached in the playoffs in San Francisco, Atlanta and Houston, the first two as a coordinator. \u00a0You could hardly blame Knapp for the Raiders\u2019 problems those two years, and the truth is the team got worse offensively after Tom Cable stripped him of the OC title.<\/p>\n
He has that \u201cdemotion\u201d on his resume, but Knapp has never been \u201cfired,\u201d in the sense that Greg Manusky was let go by Norv Turner after this season. He\u2019s lost jobs, but only when the head coach he worked for got axed. He was on Steve Mariucci\u2019s staff with the 49ers when Steve was surprisingly fired, and he got canned in Atlanta when Jim Mora wore out his welcome there. Mora spent the next two years as an assistant, and as soon as he got another head coaching job, he re-hired Knapp. The Seahawks changed their minds on Mora after just one year, and Knapp was looking for work again. Gary Kubiak hired him to be the QB coach in Houston, working with Matt Schaub, whom he had coached in Atlanta.<\/p>\n
So Schaub gets hurt, and then Matt Leinert gets hurt, and the Texans are down to C.J. Yates. You all know how that turned out, but you might have forgotten that Knapp was the guy who got the credit for \u201ccoaching him up\u201d and winning a playoff game.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a theme in Knapp\u2019s career. People who have worked with him before want to work with him again. Do you think that Matt Schaub would have wanted Knapp to be the QB coach if he didn\u2019t respect him from their days in Atlanta?\u00a0 Think Shaub was worried that Knapp was a retread?<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s another way to look at it, Raiders fans. Let\u2019s just say Dennis Allen really wanted Greg Knapp, but the people in the Raiders\u2019 offices really didn\u2019t like him. There are still many people in that organization who were there when Knapp was there. They know better than any of us what went wrong in those lost seasons, and if Knapp was to blame, they wouldn\u2019t want him back. Would Allen want the distraction of shoving Knapp down the organization\u2019s throat, with all he has to do the next couple of years? No way.<\/p>\n
All right, I\u2019m going to make one more pass at this to help Raider fans give this guy a chance. Do you like Darren McFadden, Raider Fans? Of course you do. Well, McFadden will love Greg Knapp. His SF teams were 2nd<\/sup>, 5th<\/sup> and 6th<\/sup> in rushing in his three years there, and the Falcons led the league in rushing in all three of his seasons running that show.<\/p>\n Did you see how Texas ran the ball the last few years? Okay, I can see how you don\u2019t want to give Knapp credit for that, it wasn\u2019t his offense. But the architect of the blocking schemes that the Texans use to run the ball is a guy named Alex Gibbs. Who\u2019s that? Just the guy who put the Denver Broncos running game together that finally carried John Elway to the Super Bowl Championship in the 90\u2019s. Remember those Broncos teams, how 1,000-yard rushers would appear out of nowhere every year? Gibbs did that. Kubiak brought him to Houston in 2008 to do the same thing in Houston.<\/p>\n What does this have to do with Greg Knapp? Alex Gibbs was also on the Falcons staff with Knapp and Dennis Allen. I think you can expect that the Raiders will hire an OL coach with experience in Gibbs\u2019 system, and Knapp will coordinate an offense that will make Darren McFadden and his fans very happy.<\/p>\n I think this is the fourth straight outstanding move by the Raiders. The hiring of Reggie McKenzie, the decision to cut ties with Hue Jackson, and the hiring of Allen were all big steps forward for this team, and Knapp is another piece of the puzzle they\u2019re trying to put together.<\/p>\n Raider Fans, you\u2019ve been through a lot these past ten years, but hang in there. There\u2019s a light at the end of the tunnel, and it might not be a train.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Written February 1st, 2012 It started Monday evening, like everything else does these days, on Twitter. First I saw CSNBayArea’s Paul Gutierrez\u2019 tweet saying that the Raiders had offered the offensive coordinator job to Greg Knapp. Hmm, I thought, I … Continue reading