Coach Hue Jackson Needs to Ignite Oakland Raiders in 2011

I am going to make some ridiculous comparisons in this article. Most of us in the Raider Nation are ready for Hue Jackson and his staff to light a flame under the behinds of these young, talented, well-paid (or overpaid) Oakland Raiders.

Here is our call to action: Hue Jackson, please ignite a fire and get these guys to put more effort into the game!

As one fine writer points out, Darrius Heyward-Bey has only two touchdowns in two seasons. This means, in a humorous comparison, that each of those touchdowns costs $3.5 million. Well, all we care about are touchdowns, in most cases. Right?

Now if we were to compare what Art Powell and Warren Wells may have earned during each of their first two years with the Oakland Raiders back in the 1960s or '70s, we conjecture that some of these young guys today are not cost-effective players. Their productivity has to increase.

I set up a proportion equation, using a salary of $42,000, which is a fictional number to roughly estimate what Powell and Wells may have earned during their best seasons. With that number in mind, we set up the following equations:

Powell:   27 TDs/x  =  2/7,000,000   =>    x = $1,556/touchdown, for first two years with Oakland Wells:    17 TDs/x  =  2/7,000,000   =>     x = $2,411/touchdown, for first two years with Oakland Heyward-Bey:  $7,000,000/2           =>     x =  $3,500,000/touchdown, for first two years with Oakland Next, I visited a Department of Labor website to use the CPI Inflation calculator.

Notice that $42,000 in 1970 is worth about $243,455 in purchasing power in 2011.

After inputting the data to do a backwards extrapolation, we find that $7,000,000 in 2011 is worth nearly $1,207,616 in 1970 for Heyward-Bey in thi...