By Paul Wexler
RaiderBeat.com Staff Writer

Bye, bye, big guy. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Managing general partner Al Davis loves backup quarterback JaMarcus Russell. There’s no other way to explain his continued presence on the Raiders roster. 

In his three years in Oakland, Russell has been paid almost two million dollars per touchdown. Or if you prefer to measure his success in victories, Russell has cost a little more than 4.5 million per win. But it’s not his fault. Just ask him.

“Uh, kind of hard because there was times where you try to get guys a chance to make plays and at the early part of the year, it wasn’t happening,” Russell said Thursday, when asked to grade his play this season. “So, the quarterback job, I say he looks for more help around from everybody because he can’t do it himself. It wasn’t so well but at times it was. When we look at film, it don’t be as bad as it seems on the field always.”

According to Russell, it is not that quarterback Bruce Gradkowski is playing well, he is just lucky enough to be standing behind the center when everyone around him starts making plays.

“Guys are just making plays around him,” Russell said. “In the Dallas game after you go out and win in Cincinnati there wasn’t plays really made the whole game, you know what I mean. Going into Pittsburgh, guys were making plays for him. That’s what a quarterback needs, his surrounding players. That’s what was going on.”

Russell is due $9.45 million in base salary next season, and he intends on making the Raiders pay all of it. When asked if he would rework his deal, Russell  balked.

“Oh, no,” Russell said. “That’s over and done with. I don’t even consider that as a part of it.”

It’s hard to imagine the Raiders paying him anywhere that much next season to hold a clipboard as the backup to Gradkowski or anyone else, and it would pass as a giant step backward if the Raiders anointed him the starter once again. He clearly has lost touch with his market value.

Russell will need to rework his contract to resemble that of a backup quarterback. Unless there is another team out there willing to pay him like a starter, he will have very little leverage. Therefore, he will either sign for less to stay with the Raiders or be cut and sign as a backup with another team.

Russell summed it all up as only he could: “People going to have their opinion, and I really don’t pay too much attention to that. I worry about JaMarcus and JaMarcus only.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.