by David Zizmor

ALAMEDA–The Oakland Raiders will have to wait and see on their decision to retain head coach Tony Sparano, Sparano won three out of his last five games and that’s great. Like we’ve been saying the last couple of years what you really want to see from this Raiders team is gradual improvement. The talent level is something that their still trying to figure out and as you see the team improved their results you will see them improve in their actual talent level and quality of play.

You have to give Sparano some credit the Raiders are definitely playing a lot better than they were under former head coach Dennis Allen. Sparano has been a head coach in the NFL before he was the head coach of the Miami Dolphins and coincidentally he happened to be coach of the Dolphins about three and half years ago when both the 49ers and the Dolphins were trying to sign current 49er head coach Jim Harbaugh.

If you remember there was a big flurry of meetings between owners and Harbaugh, where the owner of the Dolphins actually stuck Harbaugh on his private jet and flew him out to Miami in a last second attempt to woo him to the Dolphins and when that didn’t work he announced his support for Sparano for the Miami job and the Sparano barely lasted the remainder of that season before he was fired. Sparano has some experience he just wasn’t very good with the Dolphins that’s why he got canned.

Sparano is doing a good job so far at the Raiders the talent level isn’t that deep and it’s not known yet if Sparano will be a good long term choice for Oakland as a head coach. Anybody who came in after Allen was going to do better, he had a few organizational skills in order to get the team to play with the playbook they were going to look better. The one thing you notice at the end of the Allen era they just weren’t executing at all.

When you have a team with little talent and they can’t execute their going to look terrible on the field. Let’s be fair there have been a couple of instances the Raiders looked terrible on the field remember they lost just a few weeks ago to the Rams 52-0. So it’s not it’s been wine and roses for the Raiders under Sparano. It’s great that they beat the 49ers and the Chiefs those are big games for them you always like to go against rivals and come out on top.

Sparano in those wins did well in that regard and he’s now put himself at least in the discussion as a head coaching candidacy and you have to look at what the Raiders are planning to do in the next few years. What do the Raiders want out of a new head coach? They want to make sure that Sparano is their guy. The fact of the matter is this is a team that doesn’t have any superstars, there is no player on this team that defines the Raiders.

If you look over at the 49ers quarterback Colin Kapernick is the guy or Patrick Willis, Frank Gore is a free agent but Gore is the guy. There is a handful of players on the team who represent the 49ers, in the future the Raiders might have quarterback Derrick Carr or Latavius Murray or Khalil Mack. It’s all up and comers but on a national level when you think of the Raiders you don’t think of anybody because there is nobody good whose established themselves.

David Zizmor covers the NFL for http://www.sportsradioservice.com listen below for David comments on the 49ers and Raiders