Mark Davis Deserves the Blame for Oakland Raiders' Struggles

Heading into the 2014 season, most mentions of the Oakland Raiders involved how hot the seats of head coach Dennis Allen and GM Reggie McKenzie were. With Allen likely to get the ax soon following an 0-4 start, it seems as good of a time as any to point out that he’s not to blame for the team’s shortcomings.

The blame should fall squarely on owner Mark Davis’ shoulders.

Since Davis took over for his legendary father when he passed away in 2011, the Raiders have been caught in a downward spiral. While that’s not to say they were doing much better near the end of Al’s stint as owner, the mess has only intensified since his departure.

It all started with the firing of Hue Jackson shortly after the younger Davis took over. Once his father passed, Davis inherited ownership of the team, and began cleaning house. Instead of building upon the foundation his father left behind, he chose to tear it down and start from scratch.

Why did he choose to do this? Davis didn’t want anyone around who knew him as Davis’ little boy, who had become known as an incompetent personnel man due to his father constantly pointing out his poor decision-making abilities.

So when Davis took over ownership, he severed ties with Jackson, who had routinely seen the new owner get reamed by his departed father. Davis couldn’t risk having a head coach who questioned him or saw him in that light, so he had to go.

The next step was finding a new GM who not only saw Davis as a leader and authority figure, but who was willing to do whatever Davis saw fit. That’s when, after a six-hour interview, McKenzie was hired.

While most NFL teams tend to interview numerous candidates, Davis simply needed one sit down to decide who would lead the Raiders into an uncertain future. He didn’t take the typical route of doing the due diligence. He saw and heard what he wanted from McKenzie, and pulled the trigger before even pondering the possibility that better candidates were available. While that’s not to say that McKenzie wasn’t a good fit for the position, Davis’ shortsightedness certainly didn’t help the situation.

Next, the Raiders (more precisely, Davis) decided to bring Allen aboard to be the team’s new head coach. Seeing as he hadn’t been a head coach before and was still relatively new to coaching by NFL standards, Davis knew he would have no problem with Allen in terms of insubordination. Who even knows if McKenzie played a part in the decision-making process?

What’s more is, during his father’s reign, the Raiders were always led by offensive-minded head coaches who knew how to put points on the board. Allen, however, was a defensive-minded coach who spent every one of his NFL seasons prior to joining Oakland on the defensive side of the ball. The move didn’t exactly follow the model Davis’ father used with relative success.

Essentially, Davis did and got what he wanted, regardless of whether or not it was good for the Raiders.

Care for another example of Davis’ meddling in the every-day operations of the team, something that should fall squarely on the shoulders of McKenzie and Allen? Look no further than the Raiders’ decision to draft Derek Carr this past May.

Leading up to the draft, rumors began to circulate that Davis wanted Carr as his quarterback of the future, and no part of the coaching staff was going to tell him otherwise. While it’s still unknown whether or not McKenzie or Allen was sold on Carr as the team’s signal caller, the Fresno State product is now donning the Silver and Black. And it didn’t take long for him to steal the starting job from Matt Schaub, a player that McKenzie made a point of trading for this offseason.

That’s not to say that Carr doesn’t have a bright future with the Raiders, but the fact that Davis made sure he got what he wanted continues to illustrate the point that his interests come before the team’s.

Finally, we come to the whole stadium situation that the Raiders are currently engulfed in. As of right now, the team is playing in an outdated O.co Stadium that houses both them and the Oakland Athletics of MLB. Davis has been working to put a deal in place to stay in the Bay Area, but local powers haven’t been willing to put together an offer that suits his needs.

So instead of finding a middle ground, Davis has begun exploring options to move the team away from Oakland. While the most likely candidate to receive the Raiders is Los Angeles, where the team played from 1982 to 1994, Davis decided to put feelers out in San Antonio, Texas. He met with local officials to discuss a potential deal, enraging Oakland fans in the process.

If Davis put the team’s interests above his own, San Antonio would have never come into the equation. Instead, he’s turned his back on the extremely loyal fan base the Raiders have built since returning to Oakland in 1995. He’s more concerned about building some fancy new stadium, regardless of where it’s located, than with rewarding the fans that have filled the Black Hole season after season. Because of these decisions, the fan base has begun to waver.

So what does this all mean in terms of Allen potentially getting fired following the Raiders’ Week 4 loss to the Miami Dolphins? It means that Davis set Allen (and McKenzie) up for failure. He’s allowed fan support to decline, forced them to make draft picks based on his wants, and likely influenced the way they spent their money this offseason via free agency. Davis put them in place to be the faces the media saw, but he was pulling the strings that were tied so tightly around their limbs and lips.

And now, Allen is likely to lose his job because he was fighting a battle he could never win. It’s like playing chess with no control over your own pieces. You just sit back, cross your fingers and hope that things magically fall into place – except they didn’t.

Allen (and eventually McKenzie) will take the fall, and Davis will continue to point fingers wherever he sees fit. The reality of the matter, though, is that Allen and McKenzie are nothing more than scapegoats. They’re just fall guys who can mask the real problem pulling down the Raiders. I think you know by now what that problem is.

Al Davis instilled one simple rule in the Raiders: “Just win, baby.” His son has taken over his team, and flushed that historic motto right down the toilet.

Gil Alcaraz IV is the Director of Content for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @GilAlcarazIV, like him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.