In only two short weeks, the Oakland Raiders have created a new kind of bad. It's a remarkable bad, a potentially 0-16 bad, a bad so new it's actually old.

See, there was a time when this stuff worked. There was a time when a quarterback could take a seven-step drop and wait (and wait) for a receiver to get open. This tactic stopped working about the time coverage linebackers such as Jack Ham morphed into blitzing, head-seeking missiles such as Lawrence Taylor.

There was a time when enormous offensive linemen could hold their blocks long enough to make the seven-step drop a viable option. There was a time when screen passes were for sissies and hot reads were best-suited for the guy who isn't man enough to stand in the pocket and take the hits that are rightfully his.

There was a time when an NFL team could go two games without completing a pass to a running back and still have a legitimate chance of competing.

For that matter, there was a time when a man could sit in front of his television eating a TV dinner that came in a compartmentalized aluminum tray and watch a football game featuring Kenny Stabler and Ted Hendricks.

On a thoroughly unrelated note:

The idea that the Detroit Tigers might be gripping a little as the pressure mounts reminds me of one of my favorite baseball stories, told by former big leaguer Todd Benzinger -- a guy who could tell a great story.

I asked Benzinger what it was like to play for manager Lou Piniella on the Reds' title-winning team in 1990. Benzinger's most vivid memory had nothing to do with the sweep of the A's in the World Series. He talked about a late-season losing streak that shrank the Reds' big divisional lead.

At one point during the slide, Piniella closed the clubhouse doors and stood before his team after another loss. With a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Piniella paced around like a zoo tiger and screamed at every last one of them. Veins popping, eyes bulging -- and his message?

"Everybody relax!"

This Week's List
• Terrell Owens breaks finger: A nation mourns.

• And not only that, but he wants the Oregon coastline repositioned to sit on that straightaway between Tulsa and Stillwater: University of Oklahoma president David Boren, so incensed with the Sooners' loss Saturday that he took a few moments off from worrying about academics, said he wants the game voided and the officials suspended for the rest of the season.

• When the West Coast Offense comes from the west side of Woody Hayes' brain: Bill Callahan and the game plan from hell.

• Excerpt from Callahan's pregame speech: "Boys, go out there and fight, and know that USC will not embarrass us on that field tonight because I have decided we will go ahead and do it ourselves."

• Speaking of hell, by the way, there's always field-goal hell: Denver 9, Kansas City 6; Jacksonville 9, Pittsburgh 0.

• And, in a purely random act of hell: Nancy Grace.

• One guy who is a completely different guy this year: 49ers quarterback Alex Smith.

Continued...