re: Matt Flynn traded to Raiders for two picks

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Maybe the coaches were to blame for him being totally unprepared against Oregon State in 2004

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The guy that single handedly won this game by essentially not running the shite plays that were being called and drawing a couple of TD passes up with Bowe in the dirt, right?

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Sort of reinforces my point, does it not?

I say Russell obviously hadn't learned the playbook. You say you're "lost," because he was drawing up new plays in the dirt that helped LSU win. Not just changing plays--drawing up new plays in the dirt. Think about it.

Like I already said, maybe the coaches were to blame, but he very clearly did not know the playbook that day at all, and he had been at LSU for over a year at that point.

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BTW, JR lead LSU to two straight 11-2 seasons before Flynn did it in 2007. So yeah, the stars aligned for Flynn in 2007 that allowed him to go to the title game with the exact same record that JR had provided twice already.

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Why do people keep illogically bringing this up? It's a total red herring. Was the 2007 offense much better and more consistent than the 2006 offense? Yes. Yes, of course. No reasonable person disputes this. So why bother comparing 3-7 & 10-23 losses to 37-43 and 48-50 losses, as if that's somehow meaningful, and making such a big fuss over luck and fate? It doesn't make any sense and all of you know it. Just stop.

We're talking about the offense here. In some sense, yes, we're comparing apples & oranges because the Crowton offense was totally different than the Jimbo offense. But whatever the reason, the 2007 offense was better, and this is after losing the Bowe, Davis, and the right side of the line. It just pisses me off that some people can't admit what Flynn accomplished because they're angry about a lack of recognition for a 2006 offense that was clearly inferior.

Somebody made fun of me earlier because I brought up Frazier at Nebraska as a comparison, but really, since those Nebraska teams, how many QBs do you know of who always led their team to scoring 28 points for each game? It's simply an amazing stat, and you can count on one hand the number of other college QBs that have ever done anything like that.

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I am making no excuse for the fat slob that was Jamarcus Russell Oakland Raider. But damn you people forget what an amazing damn QB he was for us for two years.

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The old "Russell became a totally different person" argument. Forgive me if I'm just not buying it. Occam's razor tells me that the far simpler explanation is that the same bad habits I saw and talked about while he was at LSU were the same bad habits that eventually did him in with the NFL.

I'm not forgetting anything. I've been pretty consistent from 2005 on in saying that Russell was a great quarterback, but one who tended to rely too much on raw talent, and who led a lot of very disappointing offensive scoring performances under Jimbo's frustrating offense.

You can say that he was a better overall QB than Flynn, and would have done better than Flynn with Crowton's coaching, but the fact remains, Flynn in 2007 exceeded what Russell did in 2006 in terms of leading a consistent high-scoring offense, and he did it with less supporting talent around him to help.



Now I'm sure most people are wondering why I bother arguing about this so many years after the fact, but I'm doing it because nobody else will, and I'm tired of seeing other posters on here act like it's the height of ignorant stupidity to say that Flynn did better at LSU than Russell did.

It's not stupid at all. You can add all kinds of "yeah, but if X or Y" contingencies, and you can say that Russell was more talented anyway, and you can say that it doesn't make a difference either way to try to judge individual performances in a team game, and you might be right, but I wish everybody would stop treating it like something that's outside the bounds of proper or polite Rant opinion. It's a legit point of view.

And while I was often exasperated by JaMarcus while he was at LSU from 2004 through the first half of 2006, I've had absolutely no beef with the guy since he turned it around at the end of 2006. I thought the Bama Boy incident was funny and sort of reinforced my earlier opinion that he was never really that into LSU, but it's not like I felt personally offended by it or anything. I admit I've chuckled at a couple of JaWalrus jokes, but shite happens in life, and I am genuinely pulling for the guy to make a team this year.

I just think that people need to stop obsessing over individual statistics and awards, and start looking more on the end results of what worked better for the offense as a whole in big games.

Well said.

Oakland has a top tier running back and one of the best fullbacks in the game(who both catch balls out fo the backfield) along with some fast recievers who arent household names only because they havent had a quarterback! They don't lack talent their, just haven't really had opportunities to show themselves! Flynn will light it up with theses speedsters.

Glad someone else has sense and doesnt think he's going to fail miserably! Thansk for knowing football!

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don't remember him doing it the first time.

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Your joking right? Matt Flynn won a Championship with less talent right after JaMarcus left.

Why didn't we win a championship with Jamarcus then?

This doesn't make me a fan of the raiders, but glad to see him get out of seattle.