If you’re Jon Gruden and the Oakland Raiders, playing for pride is great and all, but you also need to be practical about things. When you have nothing left to play for – as the Raiders clearly don’t – about the most prudent thing you can do is start looking ahead and planning for the future.
Mired in misery at 1-8 – and with the very real possibility of not winning another game in 2018 looming over their heads like the Sword of Damocles, about all the Raiders can do is start thinking about 2019 and finding a way out of the pit they’ve buried themselves in.