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http://www.sfchronicle.com/raiders/...hp?t=cd14b0b82c0a4808f6&cmpid=twitter-premium

Raiders seek edge with new coach’s performance program

By Vic Tafur

April 18, 2015


The Raiders’ new conditioning program is so cutting edge, that the new man in charge, head strength and conditioning coach Joe Gomes, won’t even admit that it’s cutting edge when asked.

“Possibly,” he said.

Gomes sat down last week for a chat, but there were no tours given, and details were offered up as easily as the 12th bench-press rep in a set.

Not surprising, really. Gomes used to consult for the U.S. Military Special Forces and U.S. Secret Service.

His job is to reduce athletes’ injury potential and raise the bar on their optimum performance levels, not tell you how he does it.

“We are building the race car for the race,” Gomes said.

And the Raiders, with 11 wins combined in the past three seasons, definitely could use a faster and more durable race car.

A former rugby player, Gomes came to the United States from London 10 years ago. He worked at Athlete’s Performance (now EXOS) and from 2007 through ’10, Gomes ran the NFL scouting-combine preparation program, working with 13 top-10 picks.

He was recommended to new Raiders head coach Jack Del Rio by Denver strength coach Luke Richesson, and Gomes jumped at the chance to work for a football team.

“I have a lot of passion for game day, to see all the parts come together,” Gomes said. “From a coaching standpoint, from a physical preparation standpoint, with the complement of strength conditioning, sports medicine and tradition.”

Besides Gomes, assistant strength and conditioning coach Darryl Eto and strength and conditioning assistant Wesley Miller also previously worked at EXOS. (Assistant Kevin Kijowski came from the college ranks.)

“They’re cutting edge in terms of innovation and what we need to do with our (players) to give them a chance to be their healthiest and at their peak on Sundays,” Del Rio said.

The key for Gomes and his staff is individual programs within a team environment.

“There are so many different components to an individual that we have to respect in order to get the most out of them,” Gomes said. “In order to build that map of them reaching their true potential, (we have to look at) their biological edge, their training history, their injury history, how flexible they are, how stable they are, how technical they are with certain lifting techniques, their acceleration and deceleration skills, cutting ...”

The Raiders’ players have been tested, and as the offseason program progresses — there is a three-day minicamp that starts Tuesday — their “individual deficits” are targeted and training methods implemented.

Players also will find different foods at the training table — sorry, no specifics — as Gomes and his staff focus on nutrition quality and timing.

“We have some great technology in house now that can tell the athlete exactly where he is,” Gomes said.

The technology has been road tested and has produced some pretty cool results, Gomes said.

“That’s all you’re going to get from me,” he said, smiling.

The Raiders’ new “performance system” is a 24-hour approach, as players’ sleeping patterns and habits also will be addressed.

“The two biggest areas you can typically impact would be your recovery component and then your nutrition component,” Gomes said. “And if you just upgrade those areas, what you’ll find is that no matter what training they’re doing, you have already improved the level at which they can adapt to that.”

At EXOS, Gomes and his staff saw firsthand how fast technology has pushed the athlete, and what Gomes thinks is the biggest development in injury prevention and treatment.

“The speed at which we can get people back has definitely increased, and that comes not just from research but really good practitioners,” he said. “Therapists and sports scientists and coaches working together. You can create an optimal healing environment.”

It’s what Gomes and his staff are trying to do in Oakland, and if health can lead to wins, he will be healing a fan base as well.
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http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/...208066.php?t=fd40cba738&cmpid=twitter-premium

Oakland needs game plan fast to keep Raiders
By Matier & Ross

April 17, 2015 Updated: April 18, 2015 3:39pm

Time appears to be running out for Oakland and Alameda to come up with a way to keep the Raiders from leaving town.

“I think the thing will come to a head in the next couple of weeks,” said Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty.

Haggerty made the comment after a meeting Wednesday set up by NFL representatives that included Oakland City Council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney, Raiders owner Mark Davis and team President Marc Badain, and developer Floyd Kephart.

Oddly enough, the league didn’t invite new Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf.

“The NFL is pushing extremely hard to get some answers,” Haggerty said.

The biggest question is money. Davis says he wants to stay in Oakland but doesn’t have the deep pockets to pay for what is likely to be a $1 billion replacement for the Coliseum, even with help from the league.

At the same time, city and county officials have made it clear that they won’t dip into their general fund to pay for a new stadium.

That leaves Kephart, who was brought in by former Mayor Jean Quan as part of the proposed Coliseum City development, to come up with a plan.

The impetus for getting a deal done soon in the East Bay, Haggerty said, is the gathering momentum for a new stadium that the Raiders would share with the San Diego Chargers in Carson, near Los Angeles.

“At this point, the league seems to be giving Los Angeles a better shake than they are giving us,” Haggerty said.

The day after the East Bay sit-down, NFL and Raiders officials met in Southern California with Carson officials. According to the Los Angeles Times, Badain gave incoming Carson Mayor Albert Robles a silver lapel pin with the team’s logo.
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I'm not concerned. We're talking about Reggie here. Not saying he's perfect but he has his philosophies. 
 
JASON LA CANFORA
CBS Sports NFL Insider

Why the Raiders are going to LA -- whether it's with Rams or Chargers
February 20, 2015 3:42 pm ET

INDIANAPOLIS -- The Raiders are not long for Oakland. This much we know.

As movers and shakers around the NFL try to sort through the aftermath of the announcement of a Chargers/Raiders alliance for a proposal to build a stadium outside of Los Angeles, and as the Rams continue their full-speed ahead approach of building a stadium in downtown LA, there are no shortage of conclusions to be made and theories to be expounded upon.

The fallout will continue for months and the race to Southern California is as heated as it has ever been, if not more so. This is on, and it won't stop until at least one team, and quite possibly two, are playing in the LA area by the start of the 2016 season.

We still don't know which two teams it will be, and where exactly the new stadium will be built, but after discussions today with numerous people plugged in to the growing marketplace of teams seeking a new life in LA, I am most concerned for Raiders fans right now.

I've been documenting for, literally, years at this point the amount of time Raiders owner Mark Davis has been spending in LA, his growing relationship with former entertainment mogul Michael Ovitz, his unwavering intent to get a new stadium there. If anyone in the Bay Area wasn't convinced that this was a reality -- with the prospects of getting a stadium in Oakland or thereabouts incredibly bleak and the Raiders viewed within the NFL as the ideal "second team" in LA -- well it now has to be ringing loud and clear.

I continue to hear that Davis is seen as the most malleable, by far, of the three owners involved in this process and he's content to be that second team -- whether it means going with the Chargers, or the Rams. He isn't caught up in the developmental and real estate potential of these projects. He just wants some improved revenue streams, a chunk of money every season from suite sales and sponsorships and other revenue that a state-of-the-art stadium would provide. That's the end game for him: Keep his team, get to LA, and get the best second-tenant or co-tenant stadium deal he can get. And he's closer to that than ever.

Don't let this announcement fool you -- I wouldn't view the Chargers and Raiders as a guaranteed alliance, and however the league ends up jockeying the process, to the degree it can, the Raiders are viewed as a chip that can be shifted to virtually any locale as long as a new stadium is involved. (What is debatable, though, is the amount of control the NFL has over this now; in its zest to control everything involved with LA, it has, perhaps like a money-driven overbearing mother, lost all control, almost like these billionaires after being told for so long what they could or could not do, suddenly woke up one day and realized they are all grown up now and are going to doing what they want to do now. The NFL can put out statements about the process, but the prevailing perception I got from team executives was that this was becoming a free-for-all -- a "goat rodeo," as one plugged-in person put it).

What would concern me as a Raiders fan is the fact there is no momentum for a new stadium in that region, it has long been viewed as unfeasible, and, while Al Davis was at least beginning to explore the option of sharing a stadium with the 49ers in Santa Clara before he passed away, his son has been completely opposed to it. It's gotten to the point where now it's highly unlikely that this coupling can take place (though I'll never say never what it comes to the NFL).

But, rather than force that arrangement, at a time when the NFL has made it abundantly clear that it wants two teams in LA, and with the Raiders seen as the best candidate to be that second team, why force that issue? It's all about LA right now, as much as teams, and the league, want to talk about exhausting all options in their current locations. We're getting way beyond that now with multiple clubs wanting out this badly.

The Raiders are all about LA, and appear willing to go along for the ride while guys like Rams owner Stan Kroenke and Chargers owner Dean Spanos, real estate magnates and developers at their core, lead the charge. Having zero options in the short- or long-term for a new stadiums in Oakland, I have a difficult time not handicapping the Raiders as heavy favorites to be one of the two teams in LA by 2016 (assuming both go at the same time, and with these joint-proposals being formed, it grows increasingly likely to me that two free-agent teams -- in terms of their lease -- go ahead and move in the same season).

Both might as well start tapping into that new market as soon as possible. You might hear some yapping about the $100 million in debt on the Raiders current dilapidated stadium, but that's barely a financial ripple in this kind of multi-billion-dollar deal).

(In fact, if I am an NFL fan in St. Louis, I'm feeling better about my future in this league right than Oakland. The St. Louis stadium movement continues to gain momentum, and its leaders recently reached an agreement with local unions that should cut 44 weeks and millions of dollars from construction costs. They also have another meeting with NFL officials next week and it's very likely that the point people for the St. Louis stadium will present before the owners at the league meeting in Arizona next month.

It's not rosy for St. Louis in the short term, and, again, the Rams' desire to leave cannot be overstated, but they have a much more viable plan in place than anything in the Bay Area right now and some legit commitments. It's also a good possibility any team that is left out of the dance in LA could end up playing in St. Louis by the end of the decade.

The question of course, right now, becomes which stadium gets built in LA and which teams end up paired together. Kroenke set the tone for this by going rogue -- by NFL league office standards -- and twice purchasing preferred land in LA and then going ahead and announcing his intent to build in Inglewood in a deal that requires no public funding and no league funding. After being held at bay from formally announcing an intent to relocate through 2014, Kroenke wasn't going to be sitting in the corner anymore. His aim could not be more clear, and many believe if it takes suing the league in federal court to accomplish this, then so be it. He clearly has a head start on the process in terms of ability to build and the requisite local political support. I'd still call him the clubhouse leader.

But how wide of a gulf is it?

The Chargers have been late to this party, spending 15 years or so playing nice with the municipalities, saying and doing all the right things, and not exploring outside options. No hardball. Then things changed in January when Kroenke announced his acquisition of more land in Inglewood and his intent to build.

"When Kroenke made his move in January it really forced our hand," as one Chargers official put it. The game had changed and the Chargers had no recourse but to get on the LA train or risk being left without a home in California.

So, at that point, clearly the Chargers were playing from behind, but with the gloves off now, everything has been expedited. They brokered the framework of a proposal with the Raiders and, with the Chargers regular architect unable to participate due to a conflict of interest, they had to hire someone else. They negotiated for the land and by early February had the land deal in place. Numerous hurdles remain, but some familiar with the projects believe that this Carson, Calif., project might not be all that far behind Kroenke's. Deals like this don't come together overnight and the Chargers completed a fair amount of legwork, obviously, to reach this point.

Which option will the league prefer more? That remains to be seen. But the consensus of people I spoke to was that it's feasible that by the October fall league meeting, the NFL could be prepared to have the votes secured to determine which of these locations -- and which teams -- were going to Los Angeles for 2016. If not by that meeting, then perhaps in time for a special meeting called in November or December.

But this is happening. These guys aren't rattling sabers; they are in a high-stakes, big-money race, jockeying for position for one of two seats in one of the world's biggest entertainment markets, knowing that the cost of losing out, and being left without a seat in this game of musical chairs, is very real. The return of NFL football to Los Angeles is imminent. Two of these three teams will eventually be there, and if the last 24 hours have told me anything, it's that the Raiders will be riding shotgun with whomever is in the lead chair.
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Thought Brice Butler was Nnamdi for a second. The hat didnt help for real thought we'd picked him up as a DB coach. 
 
kayZEEzay said:
Crabtree looks disinterested already
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dude bout to fake that foot injury as usual.
 
GRUBMAN: IN THREE YEARS OAKLAND HAS GONE BACKWARDS


The NFL’s man in charge of potential relocations, Eric Grubman, called into to LA sportscaster Fred Roggin’s radio show today. Grubman fielded a lot of questions, including Roggin’s asking him to assess Oakland’s chances of getting a stadium deal done:

I’ve had multiple visits to Oakland. And in those visits – each of those for the past three years – I visited with with public officials, and I feel like we’ve gone backwards. So I feel like we’ve lost years and gone backwards. And that usually doesn’t bode well.

Grubman’s talking about the same Oakland that passed zoning changes and an EIR for Coliseum City, so from the process standpoint Oakland hasn’t gone backwards in the slightest. The financing piece is what remains a mystery, and I think I know why.

Three years ago, the big money tied to Coliseum City was Forest City, a proven mega-developer. They determined early in the vetting period that they weren’t going to make money, so they cut their losses. Colony Capital and HayaH Holdings took Forest City’s place. Rumors of other kinds of exotic financing surfaced (EB-5 visas, Crown Prince of Dubai). In the end, Colony Capital give up too, leaving Oakland scrambling to find someone to pick up the pieces.

Eventually that savior came in the form of Floyd Kephart. Kephart’s an adviser to the money, not the actual money guy, an added factor in an already complicated deal (his company gets a small cut). Over the past several months Grubman has dropped hints that the NFL prefers to have a simpler deal in Oakland, one without a middle man and preferably one not so contingent upon pie-in-the-sky development plans to help pay for a stadium. The league and the Raiders went into Coliseum City wanting a simpler, smaller outdoor stadium, a concept that didn’t take hold with Oakland until last fall. Even now there’s a lack of consensus about what the actual plan is, which probably frustrates the NFL to no end. If you don’t have a set concept for a stadium, you can’t have a cost estimate, and you can’t nail down the financing. Meanwhile, Stan Kroenke has financing down in Inglewood, the NFL is giving credit to St. Louis on its efforts to get public financing, and newcomer Carson, which has numerous details not in place, at least has Goldman Sachs working with the Chargers and the Raiders on 49ers-style financing for the shared stadium.

Over time the big question overshadowing Coliseum City has only gotten bigger. Everyone involved with Coliseum City knows this, you and I know this, and most importantly the NFL knows this. I’ve heard so many Oakland fans talking about how the NFL will provide $200 million or Davis can put together $400 million or even more. But anyone who has observed the NFL stadium loan process knows that the money is anything but a given. It’s directly tied to achievable stadium revenues, and is not the foundation upon which a stadium financing plan is built. Other financing has to be the foundation. The NFL awards a G-4 loan only after everything else is secured. Maybe Kephart has an ace up his sleeve that will help him deliver the project. Right now it’s easy to peg Oakland as the most behind the eight-ball in terms of actually building a stadium. Despite that gloomy outlook, things may play out in a way that keeps the team in Oakland – even without a new stadium on the horizon. Grubman advised against anyone putting forth definitive statements about any team’s future, and I agree completely. There are too many variables, too many possibilities to say anything with real confidence.

–

The other thing I’ve noticed over the past few weeks is how the media has covered the teams’ stadium prospects in the different markets. LA media is fired up about at least one team coming as they haven’t been in 20 years, with the Daily News and the Times providing unrelenting coverage and talking heads like Roggin regularly talking about it on the radio. San Diego sports radio has tried to prop up site alternatives in the city while the Union Tribune has constantly beat the stadium drum, led by columnist Nick Canepa. The Post Dispatch has worked the St. Louis and State of Missouri efforts, with Bernie Miklasz writing quite a bit about the Rams’ travails – at least until spring training started.

In the Bay Area? You have news coverage from the Chronicle and BANG, plus in-depth stuff from Bizjournals. Columns and radio air time have been remarkably light on the Raiders’ stadium issue, especially when compared to the 49ers’ move to Santa Clara and the A’s efforts to leave Oakland. I can’t figure out exactly why. Sure, the nomadic history of the Raiders has to be a factor, as is the Davis name. There has to be more to it, though. Are people tired of the stadium saga? Are they coming to grips with the idea that at least one team will leave the Coliseum complex? There are supporting fan/civic groups in the East Bay, but they don’t have big voices. In the past Dave Newhouse would’ve been the guy screaming bloody murder about it all, these days it’s Matier & Ross sprinkling in a scare once in a while. The loudest voice is a college-aged superfan from the Sacramento area who knows little about politics, especially Bay Area politics. If a decision is made to move the Raiders in the next year or so, many will be left wondering how it all happened, and they can start with the media. The flip side of this light coverage is that there are no frequent calls to provide public financing, a refreshing change of pace.

Hell, I’m only interested in the Raiders insofar as it affects the A’s. If the Raiders leave in 2016, that’s fine with me since I can focus on what it’ll take to build a new ballpark for the A’s at the Coliseum. I’d love to be more empathetic, but frankly I’ve been waiting 20 years for a proper ballpark for the A’s, half of those years writing this blog. The quicker the A’s can determine their own future the better. And if that means the Raiders are gone, so be it.
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http://newballpark.org/2015/04/22/grubman-in-three-years-oakland-has-gone-backwards/
 
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There's nothing wrong with being informed. The analysis in that article tells you where Oakland stands in keeping/losing the Raiders and the future of the franchise. It's important.
 
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