Thursday, October 2, 2008
ESPN.com news services

How dysfunctional are the Oakland Raiders? So dysfunctional that
Warren Sapp warns anybody who asks him about signing there to stay far
away.

"Nobody tells you how bad it is," the former defensive tackle said on
Showtime's "Inside the NFL." " ... any person that calls me on the
telephone, [I tell them] do not go anywhere near Oakland."

Sapp, who retired after the 2007 season -- his fourth with the Raiders
-- said that Lane Kiffin, fired this week by owner Al Davis, never got
a fair chance in Oakland.

"He came in there with a change of mentality. The whole system," Sapp
said on "Inside the NFL." "He changed how the locker room looked
because it was going to take that kind of overhaul for Oakland to
become the proud franchise we all knew it was."

Sapp said Oakland won't change for the better until Davis doesn't own
the team anymore.

"[Davis] is the common equation," Sapp said on "Inside the NFL." "You
take him out, put him at home watching film or whatever he is doing --
you have a functioning football organization. But once he comes over
the top, he goes and starts moving it around.

"Al Davis knows football -- it's just '60s and '70s football. That's
what it is. He's thinking that Cliff Branch is outside and [Jim]
Plunkett is dropping back and you can throw it 80 yards down the field
-- deep ball, deep ball, deep ball."

Sapp even said that Davis would call in plays when Sapp was playing
for the Raiders.

"I remember the first two weeks I was there, we played a preseason
game. Somebody came up one time and said, 'We're going deep right
here, dog.' I said, how do you know? He said, 'The phone just rang.'

"All the preparation that goes into a week of work is there, the
practicing that you have to put in order to do these things, sometimes
[Al Davis] messed with that part of it and that's what kills you,"
Sapp said on "Inside the NFL."

Chris Mortensen is a Senior NFL Analyst for ESPN.