Tony Sparano Has Freedom to Make Nothing-to-Lose Changes to Oakland Raiders

The Oakland Raiders are such an ugly 0-4 that they decided to take the drastic measure of firing head coach Dennis Allen over the bye week. Owner Mark Davis and general manager Reggie McKenzie were clearly trying to send a message to the players and coaches that losing as they have recently is not something they will tolerate.

It’s hard to blame them after 10 straight losses by an average margin over 13 points dating back to last season, and naming Tony Sparano interim head coach was the sensible thing to do. Almost immediately, Sparano started making minor changes that he hopes will help the Raiders become a competitive football team on the field.

Now that it’s clear Sparano is willing to make changes, he needs to make them as if he has nothing to lose. Small changes during the week should just be the beginning.

Sparano started by rearranging the locker room in the hopes that the team will feel like they are getting a fresh start. He also had the team bury a football in the ground to symbolize their 0-4 start. The Raiders don’t literally get to start fresh, but they have an opportunity to do things differently going forward.



"We’re doing things faster,” Sparano said Monday via Raiders.com. “We’ve changed a ton of things right now. The locker room is changed right now, the practice schedules are changed.

"The week will continuously taper down for the players so they have more gas in their tank when they get to the ball game, those type of things. We’ve added different periods to work on fundamentals, to work on fits, to work on some of the techniques that fly by in our league right now.”

Changing the team’s practice habits makes sense, but the more important changes should be on game day. A quicker pace at practice and a period devoted to fundamentals are just a tip of the iceberg of the positive changes Sparano needs to ma...