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Let's get the disclaimers out of the way up front, if only because they take so long otherwise.

JaMarcus Russell is:

(A) Playing behind an Oakland Raiders offensive line that spouts a new leak each weekend;

(B) Throwing to a receiving corps that is undertalented and dropsie-prone by any NFL standard; and

(C) Unable to relieve that pressure by handing off to Darren McFadden, because McFadden's turf toe still has him out of the lineup.

Not to mention the facts that:

(D) Russell suits up for the Raiders, which means that

(E) There aren't any magical solutions coming down ye olde pipeline.

But let's not forget:

(F), because it's a big fat F. When Atlanta's Matt Ryan roundly outplayed Russell on Sunday in a meeting of the top two quarterbacks from the past two drafts, the sequence boldly underscored one of the basic differences between them.

Without putting too fine a point on it? Ryan's the one who showed up for camp.

Oh, sure, it's history now. Russell's six-month contract "negotiation" with the Raiders last year can be circular-filed at the team's Alameda headquarters, along with -- apparently -- most of the offensive playbook. With the Raiders at 2-6 and Russell sporting the lowest completion percentage among starting QBs in the league, with the team on its second coach of the season and fighting a perception that ownership has cut its own legs out from under it -- with all that, perhaps an old holdout from 2007 doesn't look like the biggest fish in the pond.

But that's just it, of course. Russell is the big tuna. He is the No. 1 overall pick from the 2007 draft. He is the guy -- in concert with Oakland's fight-first, ask-questions-later front office -- who botched the holdout to the point that he essentially cost himself his entire rookie season.

And he is paying for it now, in that special way that professional athletes "pay" for their mistakes. His checks keep cashing and he learns on the job, while the pain gets transferred to the ticket-holders, one way or another -- and Sunday's performance in Oakland even had a few of them catcalling for backup Andrew Walter to come off the bench and take a few sacks. (Snaps. I meant snaps.)

For the record, Russell's teammates haven't given up on him, and they stood behind the quarterback again after he recorded a 19.0 rating against the Falcons by completing 6 of 19 passes for 31 yards. Russell fumbled twice (he lost one of them), skipped several passes off the turf, continued his self-defeating habit of throwing off his back foot, and tossed an end zone interception that thwarted the Raiders' only serious touchdown opportunity. But he spoke afterward with the disappointment and determination of a leader, and enough of Oakland's offensive players still feel he can get them to where they want to go -- wherever that is.

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Yes, there's still the thought that Russell is too gifted athletically -- and too beefy a specimen -- for anyone to rush to ultimate judgment. Maybe on a better team, with a better line, with better receivers and coaching, with better ownership … maybe, maybe, maybe.

(While we're on maybes: Maybe Lane Kiffin, the coach banished from the complex for insubordination and general non-eye-patch behavior, had an inkling approaching insight last year when he opposed taking Russell with the first pick overall.)

What we know for sure is that Russell and the Raiders failed utterly in their contract deal, and that Russell never did make camp, and that Russell wasn't in uniform until the first game of the '07 season had already been played, and that Russell has been trying -- and failing -- to play catch-up ever since.

When the Falcons used the No. 3 overall pick in this year's draft on Ryan, it almost appeared as if they had taken a class devoted to the study of the Raiders' downfall. Virtually the first thing they did, from owner Arthur Blank on down, was make sure that Ryan got signed and in uniform. All parties made it happen. Understanding that Ryan's progress for the 5-3 Falcons right now has pleasantly surprised everybody involved, it's still worth noting that he was a player who was part of the team structure, and the team chemistry, from the very start.

What might have been, had Russell gotten off to such a clean start in Oakland, is left to speculation. The Raiders are in such tatters now -- their fans are down to rooting for Michael Vick to get out of prison so he can be signed -- that it all seems academic. But JaMarcus Russell was too good, too often at LSU for Raiders fans -- and, perhaps, a fair segment of the players themselves -- to wonder if it all could have gone differently.

It could have. It didn't. And that's what makes the Raiders the Raiders.

Mark Kreidler's book "Six Good Innings," about the pressure of upholding a small-town Little League legacy, is in national release. His book "Four Days to Glory" has been optioned for film/TV development by ESPN Original Entertainment. A regular contributor to ESPN.com, Kreidler can be reached at mark@markkreidler.com.