ALAMEDA — The entire team crowded around kicker Giorgio Tavecchio, chirping and hollering and making obscure noises to generate anything close to a game-like environment.
If Tavecchio made his 53-yarder, the Raiders were off to summer vacation. If not, Gruden barked, practice would start from the beginning.
Luckily for the Raiders their head coach was kidding, because Tavecchio’s first attempt from 53 sailed wide left. His second cruised through the uprights, thus ending the Raiders’ final mini-camp (a 100-play Thursday walkthrough) in anticlimactic fashion and sending the team into a six-week vacation before training camp begins in Napa in late July.