Oakland Raiders Can Surprise and Shock Opponents in 2012

Damali Binta – Jun 12, 2012

As I sat down to write my Tuesday article, I heard an interview of Dennis Allen on SiriusXM Radio, and the tone was very good. It's clear that Allen expects to have a good season in 2012 and a prediction of  7-9 or 8-8 is below what my intuition is telling me.

In this article I processed transaction data for the Oakland Raiders to see if there were more changes in 2012 than there were in 2011 or 2010. Since one of the former Oakland Raiders had the audacity to say that the Raiders are less stable than the Kansas City Chiefs I did what I usually do.  I challenged that perception.

Basically, I tallied data for the transactions through May 2012 and compared the number of transactions with those of Kansas City. I conjecture that the larger the number of transactions, the less stable the team since any change has to be moderated, and adjustments have to be made after a player is removed or added.

In the second chart, I tallied total transactions for 2012 (to date), and tallied 2011 and 2010, in total.

Here is the data:

Jerry Lee Lewis could say that there is a "whole lotta changes going on" in the Kansas City Chiefs franchise. This could mean that they are trying, desperately, to get their house in order. On the other hand, the Oakland Raiders have made significant changes, but the number of changes made in each of the time periods focused on in this article is below that of Kansas City.

If I conjecture that the use of transaction data is a fair indicator of the stability of a franchise then the high frequencies in the Chiefs data suggest more instability and radical changes than for the Oakland Raiders. Other variables can moderate the data, but my focus is on a limited analysis of transaction data in order to create a framework for a comparison of stability.

It's easy to see that in 2011, the Chiefs had 101 percent more changes than the Raiders. From January to May, we see that in 2012, the Raiders have made significant changes but the number of changes is less than those for the Chiefs.

This data will be updated as more transactions occur in the two franchises focused on in this article. To date, the Raiders have made fewer changes in number, but profound changes in depth, leadership and cost-effective factors.

One of my goals is to monitor the media and to prepare rebuttals to careless and subjective statements about the Oakland Raiders. One motto that can be used is "put up or shut up" or naysayers should attempt to use sound data to support what they say about the Oakland Raiders in 2012.

It's a new day. It's a new era, and there just may be surprising and shocking positve outcomes in 2012.