NAPA
Eighteen times the other day, in five mini-news conferences for players checking into training camp, the buzzword of the Raiders’ preseason – “expectations” – could be heard. Four more times, the singular version of the same word was used.
So that’s 22 times in an hour and a half, or 1.57 for every year since the team last made the NFL playoffs, in 2002.
While analytics experts parse that number for meaning, it’s understood that expectations don’t pay the bills. Winning does, and the Raiders seem to understand this. They know they’ll need more than expectations to win close games late in the fourth quarter.