Raiders actually may not have shanked kicker deal 
Feb. 17, 2010
By Ray Ratto
CBSSports.com Columnist

[img_r]http://images.cbssports.com/u/photos/football/nfl/img12940769.jpg[/img_r]The Oakland Raiders are one of the truly Pavlovian experiences in sports -- they do something, we laugh. Their fans defend them, armed with only their game-day face paint and blinkered devotion, and we laugh some more.

Thus, Sebastian Janikowski's new $16 million contract, $9 million of which is guaranteed, and which was described by his own agent as "monstrous," got the usual reaction. When you add it to the fact that the Oakland punter, Shane Lechler, is the highest-paid foot in the game (Janikowski passed Tennessee's Rob Bironas for second, unless Bironas' next contract pulls him ahead), well, much hilarity ensued at Al Davis' expense.

Again.

But this is one of those signings that actually makes sense for them, for any number of reasons, starting with this one:

Did you see the way the playoff kickers performed?

You see, kicking is and always has been a much underrated department of the game, and whether you like the idea of kickers being called football players or even being employed by football teams, the rules that cover this clearly exist and aren't going to be changed any time soon. So live with it, or watch something else.

(We would even extend the pro-kicker argument to the number of times you got to argue with someone over whether someone should have gone for a field goal or a touchdown, and how much fun you had calling each other names while clutching a beer -- now those are great times).

Anyway, you got kickers, and you're going to keep having kickers, so if you have a chance to nail down one of the best ones, you do it. You can quibble about the money viz. the salary cap, but the fact is that the Raiders have only two strengths -- Janikowski and Lechler -- and losing either would ensure more Raider football, only worse.

Besides, given that these are the Raiders, and especially going into an uncapped year, what makes you think they would wisely spend the money they saved on Janikowski?

The best you can say for the draft picks the Raiders have expended in this decade is that some of them turn out to develop in time into useful if not extraordinary players, and after a fair amount of abuse, like guard Robert Gallery and safety Michael Huff. The worst you can say is that some of them start off like JaMarcus Russell, who, if he actually achieves late-bloomer status, would make him comeback player of the quarter century.

Now if this seems a backward reason to praise the Janikowski signing -- that they'd just waste the money on something way worse -- so be it.

But as miserable as the Raiders can be (they still haven't gotten around to announcing that the process for evaluating coach Tom Cable has finally ended, and haven't announced the Janikowski deal as of this writing), they are hardly helped by letting one of their few identifiable assets become a free agent.

And yes, we are here including the fact that Janikowski began his career on the business end of too many brushes with the law; there have been no such recorded incidents in eight years, and at some point one has to assume he has either lightened up or tightened up.

Indeed, his only truly embarrassing moment in those eight years wasn't even his fault -- Lane Kiffin sent him out to try a 76-yard field goal right before halftime of Kiffin's last game with the Raiders two years ago. Janikowski, in effect, was sent onto the field to serve as a middle finger to Davis, which is weird work if you can get it.

But as a performer, both place-kicking and kicking off after those field goals (the Raiders don't score touchdowns), his numbers essentially stand on their own. And if kicking is important, the best should be paid as though it was.

And no, it doesn't matter whether you think kicking is important. It is, because the National Football League says it is. It is, because the playoffs just proved they are.

Thus, at the risk of losing our union card over this kind of behavior, we say that the Raiders did not screw up by paying Sebastian Janikowski that "monstrous" money. And fret not. They'll give you plenty of other reasons to laugh at them later.

After all, just because Pavlov's theories don't work every time, they still work often enough.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.