Speed is Al's Specialty

I was thinking the other day about all the burners the Oakland Raiders have had over the years and I decided to look up some stats and videos on said burners. Everyone remembers Bo Jackson's rare combination of size, speed, strength. It was said that he was one of the fastest players to ever play the game. I wanted to see how true this actually was so I went on YouTube. Here is NFL Network's Top Ten Fastest Players in NFL History. There are 4 players on that list that played for the Silver and Black. The list includes Cliff Branch, Willie Gault, Randy Moss, and Bo Jackson. Bo Jackson was no. 3 on their list, having been beaten out by Darrell Green and Bob Hayes.

I also went to Wikipedia to see what kind of information they had on this topic. They had a list of players who registered sub 4.3 - 40's since 1999, the first year they implemented electronic timing. Here is that list. Four out of 9 players were drafted by the Raiders. What does this all mean? You look at the list of players, and the players of the past were definitely Hall of Fame caliber players. The trouble is, the recent players haven't left a mark on the franchise. The only one who has even played well is Stanford Routt and before this year, you would have a hard time saying that he would ever amount to much. Interestingly enough, Chris Johnson is on that list and he is a dynamic game-changing back in this league. So is Champ Bailey. So it's not that speed doesn't translate, you just have to find the combination of speed and skill. That's something that Al Davis has been lacking the last 10 years.