I can’t listen to John Facenda’s rendition of “The Autumn Wind” without getting chills down my spine.  This poem was immortalized by NFL Films and of course refers to the Oakland Raiders.  Images of silver and black clad offensive linemen, with their breath bellowing in the cold autumn air, are burned into my brain.  To me, this is the epitome of the NFL.

            As a Steeler Fan, I should have reveled in the destruction of the Raiders on Monday night.  Instead, I actually felt rather sad to see a once proud franchise and opponent sink to such lows.  I know that the NFL is cyclic, and that the Raiders will probably rise again, but I cannot recall seeing a team as dominated and humiliated as the Raiders were that night.  Unfortunately for Raider fans, there is no light at the end of the tunnel.  Aside from Randy Moss, this team is devoid of talent on both sides of the ball.  How did this happen?   This team was in the Super Bowl just 3 years ago.  That team was old with Gannon at QB, Brown and Rice at WR.  The loss of those players as well as poor drafting and personnel decisions eventually led to the carnage we all saw Monday night.  In 2004, they passed on Ben Roethlisberger and Philip Rivers and took Robert Gallery with the second pick in the draft.  This year, they could have had Cutler or Leinart, but took a DB.  To be fair, Gallery was considered a franchise type tackle when he came out of Iowa, but he has been a bust thus far.  For some reason, they franchised Charles Woodson, whose skills were clearly diminishing, and has been injured for the past 2 years.  He is also gone, though.  They traded for Randy Moss, giving up a first round linebacker in Napoleon Harris as well as the 7^th overall pick in last year’s draft.  This year, the team’s big free agent pickup was Aaron Brooks who was terrible in New Orleans when the Raiders could have gone after Drew Brees or Daunte Culpepper.  This team is clearly headed in the wrong direction.   In the NFL, parity will eventually come with losing and high draft picks, but I believe the Raiders could speed up this process by taking advantage of their one true talent, Randy Moss.

            In 1989, the Dallas Cowboys were as pitiful as today’s Raiders, but they had its Randy Moss in Herschel Walker.  The team traded him to Minnesota for some players and a bevy of draft picks which were used to eventually acquire Emmitt Smith, Russell Maryland, Kevin Smith, and Darren Woodson, several keys to their later championships.  The Raiders could use Moss in the same way.  The problem would be finding a team desperate enough for a receiver.  New England could be that team.  They just lost their top receiver, Deon Branch to Seattle and picked up an extra first round pick next year.  Brady had difficulty finding open receivers against the Bills on Sunday.  Moss, even with his off and on field issues is still the best receiver in the game.  Adding him to the mix in New England would make that offense truly scary.  Would Belichick do it?  After losing Branch and Givens during the offseason, the Pats only proven receiver is Troy Brown who is 35 years old.  Reche Caldwell has not shown anything, and Chad Jackson is a rookie who is hurt.  This team is built to win now.  Their defense is old and aging quickly, so the team’s window of opportunity may be closing.

            Even though they’ve had success with their top picks over the past few years, Randy Moss is a proven commodity while a draft pick is still a crapshoot, so giving up draft picks for Moss would make sense.  In addition, Tom Brady took much less money than he could have had in order to stay with the Patriots so they could use that money to keep their top players.  How do you think he feels now that they have let his friend and favorite receiver go while the Pats had the cap room to sign him?  Trading for Moss might help to pacify Brady and the rest of the locker room. Oakland should offer Moss for New England’s two first round picks, both of which will probably be low, as well as some players.   The Raiders could then use these on offensive linemen and use its own, likely to be high, first round pick on a franchise QB.  If there is truly any karma (tuck rule), Moss would have the same success in New England as Herschel Walker had in Minnesota.