The past four years, the Oakland Raiders are 15-49, good for a .234 winning percentage under three head coaches. Just Blow Baby.

More than perhaps any other franchise in football, the Raiders are stuck in a 1970s mentality. They simply believe they're smarter than everyone else, and don't have to work as hard. They can hire coordinators out of random bed-and-breakfasts. They can ignore players' pasts, be they checkered or simply ineffective, and assume throwing on the silver and black will make them good. They can thumb their nose at convention, and simply throw downfield at will.

That stuff might've flown when Al Davis was the deer tick attached to Pete Rozelle's left buttock, but the NFL has changed. In retrospect, the blip of success Oakland had under Jon Gruden was probably the worst thing that could have happened to the team. It convinced the Raiders the old way still works.

The old way is what led to Kerry Collins and Randy Moss, LaMont Jordan and Aaron Brooks, and now the return of Doug Gabriel and the beleaguered Dominic Rhodes. Hubris, thy name is Al. Somehow I have a hard time believing 32-year-old Lane Kiffin, who has exactly zero professional football experience, is the immediate answer.

There was precious little offensive talent on this team in '06, even with Moss. The offensive line was horrid and didn't get better in the offseason. Andrew Walter was the worst starting quarterback in football (except for maybe Brooks). Jordan was bad and then hurt, Courtney Anderson didn't emerge and Justin Fargas revealed himself to be nothing more than a backup running back. Rex Ryan's defense was better: The continued excellence of Derrick Burgess, the launching of Nnamdi Asomugha into cornerback stardom and the adequacy of guys like Michael Huff and Kirk Morrison helped Oakland's fantasy defense verge on the league's top half. Everything else, though, was and is a mess.

Key Additions
QB JaMarcus Russell
QB Josh McCown
RB Dominic Rhodes
TE Zach Miller
WR Johnnie Lee Higgins
FB Justin Griffith
WR Travis Taylor
WR Mike Williams
RB Michael Bush
OL Cooper Carlisle

Key Losses
WR Randy Moss QB Aaron Brooks OL Langston Walker QB Marques Tuiasosopo

Probable Lineup
QB: Josh McCown
RB1: LaMont Jordan
RB2: Justin Fargas
WR1: Ronald Curry
WR2: Jerry Porter
WR3: Doug Gabriel
TE: Zach Miller
K: Sebastian Janikowski

Quarterbacks

JaMarcus Russell wasn't drafted first overall to sit the entire season. The Raiders will be very bad once again, and McCown figures to give way to Russell in the second half of the year. Walter is still around, but he underwent arthroscopic knee surgery in mid-June, and will be healthy again only in time for training camp, putting him third on the depth chart for now.

Running Backs

Rhodes was signed to a relatively large free-agent contract to threaten Jordan, but Rhodes will be suspended for Oakland's first four games this season for violating the league's substance abuse policy. That leaves the door open (again) for Justin Fargas, who continues to flash great athletic ability and almost no actual football-playing ability. For a month, we can expect Jordan to go unchallenged, with Fargas spelling him; once the suspension is up, Rhodes will assume a big place in the offense, perhaps going so far as to become a straight-up platoon mate for Jordan. Considering the offensive line behind which these guys will run, none is a very fun fantasy option. Don't forget the Raiders also drafted Michael Bush in the fourth round this year, but although his recovery from a severely broken leg is coming along, he likely won't be ready for the daily grind of training camp, and expecting any production from him this season is wishful thinking.

Wide Receivers

The usual suspects, minus Moss, will haunt defensive backfields all year before tearing knee ligaments. For now, I guess you can assume injury-prone Ronald Curry and chronic malcontent Jerry Porter get the starting gigs, with prodigal son Gabriel spelling them. Rookie Johnnie Lee Higgins is a name to know; Higgins, a third-rounder out of UTEP, has reportedly looked very good in offseason workouts, and the team hopes he can start in the slot. Alvis Whitted is still around, but he's never exceeded 300 yards receiving in a season. Mike Williams makes an interesting throw-in acquisition in the McCown trade, if only because he worked closely with Kiffin at USC, but Kiffin's presence won't suddenly make Williams anything other than slow as molasses, so don't get too excited. If you had Travis Taylor in the "Who Will Be The Raiders' No. 7 Wide Receiver?" pool, congratulations.

Tight Ends

Rookie second-rounder Zach Miller is expected to be the starter from jump street, sending both Courtney Anderson and Randal Williams to the bench. Considering this team also acquired Tony Stewart (the ex-Cincinnati Bengal, not the hot-tempered Home Depot driver), playing time will be a mess for this backup trio. Suffice it to say, if you're drafting Oakland Raiders reserve tight ends, you might need to find a shallower league.

Week 1 Detroit Lions
Week 3 Cleveland Browns
Week 5 BYE
Week 8 @ Tennessee Titans
Week 9 Houston Texans
Week 14 @ Green Bay Packers
Week 15 Indianapolis Colts
Week 16 @ Jacksonville Jaguars
Week 17 San Diego Chargers

I honestly can't find a single Oakland Raider who should start in any fantasy leagues. I suppose if you're in a 16-teamer, maybe you can use Jordan as your RB2, provided you get LaDainian Tomlinson as your RB1.

Naw, I wouldn't do it. Go get Michael Turner instead.

The quarterback situation promises to be a petri dish, and I wouldn't be shocked to see all three guys -- Russell, McCown and Walter -- get at least one start. Russell would be the guy to draft simply because he's the only one with actual upside, in the form of his cannon-esque right arm, but using rookie quarterbacks on your fantasy team is a shortcut to the poor house. No one on this club will have significantly more touchdowns than interceptions.

At running back, Jordan gets a one-month do-over as the Raiders' leading man. You can chalk up some of his pathetic 2006 (434 rushing yards, 10 receptions, two touchdowns, 3.8 yards per carry) to a dreadful offensive line, but Jordan looked like a shadow of his New York Jets self, running hesitantly, missing holes, missing blocks and generally making himself the biggest bust in fantasy football in '06. He also missed the last six games with a torn knee ligament. Rhodes was uninspired in pretty much every Colts game last year except the Super Bowl, a game in which he ran for 113 yards and a touchdown. On most teams, he's not anything close to an every-down back, but this isn't most teams. When he returns in Week 6, don't be shocked to see Rhodes get a heavy enough workload to suck the value out of Jordan.

The biggest culprit here is the offensive line. Believe me, it's not like I'm a big Langston Walker fan, but he probably was the team's best tackle, and he's gone to Buffalo. Barry Sims gets the blindside tackle job after barely holding his own at guard last year, and Kiffin has already hinted he doesn't think former second overall pick Robert Gallery can play tackle in the NFL, and might have to be stuck inside at guard. Jake Grove is an adequate center and I like Cooper Carlisle playing guard in Oakland's new zone-blocking scheme (considering he's coming over from zone-blocking Denver), but the other tackle spot (if it's not Gallery) might come down to journeymen Chad Slaughter and Cornell Green. That's scary. This unit gave up 76 sacks last year.

Curry can be a good NFL wide receiver, but with this line and these signal-callers, he's not a fantasy starter this year. Curry did catch 33 passes in the team's final four games last year (after Moss and Porter decided to check out), and if his knees stay intact, I guess you never know. He's an OK later-round gamble. Porter almost caught 1,000 yards' worth of passes in '04 and '05, but was active for only four games last season because he and Art Shell hated one another. He's got really good skills and should be out of the doghouse, but again, because of his team, he's not fantasy starter material. Neither is Higgins, but keeper-league owners should know his name. Clearly, rookie wide receivers hardly ever have any kind of fantasy impact, but Higgins is a lightning-quick slot guy who can catch a pass in space and take it upfield in a heartbeat. I don't see him contributing regularly enough to be a fantasy force in '07, but moving forward he's got the potential to be a serious weapon. The rest of these guys -- Williams, Taylor, Whitted, Gabriel -- are waiver-wire fodder. Miller out of Arizona State will be the starting tight end, and given the fact that Kiffin always enjoyed using his tight ends at USC (Dominique Byrd comes to mind), Miller has potential. But he's not fast, and he'll simply be way too limited by his quarterback and his own inexperience to be a fantasy entity this year.

On defense, as I mentioned above, there's talent. Derrick Burgess will be a force in individual defensive player leagues, and I'm not kidding: Nnamdi Asomugha would be a borderline superstar on a good team. There will be weeks when the Raiders rack up some sacks and hold some mediocre opponents' offenses down. But the pressure a bad offense puts on a good defense can break a pipe. The Raiders' defense was worn down in games in '06, and there's every reason to expect it'll happen again this year. Unfortunately, for all the intriguing talent on this side of the ball, I still see the Raiders as a bye-week fill-in unit.

Nothing to see here. Move along. Nothing to see.

If you're in a deep league and want to take a flyer on Curry or Porter, I can't quibble, provided you don't plan on starting either right away. If you're in a keeper league, you'll want to draft Russell, though not so early that you're neglecting rookies who can actually help you this year. I'd never advocate drafting more than one defense, so you have to leave Oakland's unit on the shelf. And if you're positive Jordan is going to rebound from a season in which he caught 60 fewer passes than in '05, I guess it's OK to take him as a deep-round sleeper. But that's it, folks. It's going to be ugly again this year in Oaktown.

Christopher Harris is a fantasy baseball, football and racing analyst for ESPN.com. You can e-mail him here.