by David Zizmor

ALAMEDA–The football is a funny shaped ball it could bounce in a lot of different directions and the Oakland Raiders who are winless in five games will need that ball to bounce their way this week as they prepare to face Johnny Football Manziel and his band of Cleveland Browns this coming Sunday in brisk Cleveland.

The Raiders are not so awful where they are never going to win a game and there are teams that have looked really, really bad but have picked up at least a one game victory in a season. The Raiders can pull it off and to their credit in the last couple of games against San Diego and Arizona they managed to be in the game late. That’s a step in the right direction when former Raider coach Dennis Allen was head coach the Raiders weren’t even in the game.

The fact that the Raiders at least were able to get themselves in a competitve place is a good sign. They have a really tough schedule down the stretch here and their not going to get anybody laying down for them. Their not going to have any easy wins, there’s not a Jacksonville Jaguar, Tampa Bay Bucs, or Atlanta Falcon game coming up on their schedule.

The Raiders have the NFC West coming up after Cleveland with the Seahawks and they just finished losing to the Arizona Cardinals this past week. There’s not going to be an off week for them, their not going to have a week where their going to say, “we can beat this team coming up” it doesn’t exist.

The Raiders are going to have to keep doing what they’ve been doing, which is stick to their game plans be really disciplined, try to avoid turnovers and try to force a few turnovers on their opponent. They might get a little bit lucky here and there that’s what it’s going to take for them to win a game because their not a talented team.

It’s true the Raiders are not very talented so their going to have to make it up in other ways and part of that is luck and you got to make your own luck. That’s being a little creative with your play calling we saw that with the Rams versus the Seahawks last weekend where the Rams were a little bit desperate and made some amazing special teams when they managed to pull off the victory maybe Oakland needs to take a page out of the Rams playbook.

The Raiders aren’t going to win a lot of games if they do win any it’s a long season, the only light at the end of the tunnel they have is the one where they can kind of shake up the front office and make some good draft picks in the off season and start on the road to recovery. Right now the cupboard is kind of bare they don’t have a lot of guys who project to be good down the road and until they restock it’s going to be a tough road for them.

David Zizmor talks Raiders football past his 49ers interview on the recording below and David covers the NFL for http://www.sportsradioservice.com