Busters
OL Alex Leatherwood
After being a Buster for all four games at right tackle to start the season — twice a Top Buster –, the first-round rookie was a Buster eight more times after moving right guard including sharing Top Buster status with some of his fellow linemen in the team’s Wild Card loss in Cincinnati.
RT Brandon Parker
When Leatherwood moved inside, Parker came in. And they both were Busters eight times over the final 14 games as well as sharing Top Buster status for the Wild Card game. In fact, Parker was Top Buster three times this season. How, after four seasons, Tom Cable keeps thinking Parker is going to turn the corner is madness.
CB Brandon Facyson
Facyson had a tough job coming in off the street to take over the starting job when Trayvon Mullen was lost to injury. And in the first half of the season, he looked pretty good. It was that home stretch where the luster started to wear off and he was a Buster six times, twice a Top Buster.
DE Clelin Ferrell
Ferrell was a Buster twice this season. It may have been more if it weren’t for how little he saw the field. He’s just utterly ineffective, offering little as either a pass rusher or a run stopper. Rookie third-round pick Malcolm Koonce didn’t even see the field until late in the season, appearing in five games. And he finished with more sacks (2.0) and tackles for loss (two) than former fourth overall pick Ferrell (1.5 and one) did in 15 games.
C Andre James
Five times James was a Buster including twice a Top Buster. He showed some flashes of athleticism in downfield blocking, but no sure signs he can be the team’s long-term answer at center.
LB Cory Littleton
Early in the season, it looked like Littleton might start to live up to his free-agent contract under new DC Gus Bradley. But it didn’t last. He was a Buster three times starting in week 12 and by midway through the team’s 48-9 loss to the Chiefs in Week 15, Littleton was benched in favor of rookie Divine Deablo. The move seemed to signal an upgrade in the play of the defense.
HC Jon Gruden
To be clear, this isn’t about his emails. It wouldn’t be in keeping with Ballers & Busters if I made up new rules for things that happened before or after the games were played. When Gruden was forced to resign after week five, he had already been a Buster three times, including a Top Buster twice.
Then the team won two straight following his exit. And unlike the previous three seasons under Gruden, the Raiders finished strong to make the playoffs. Instead of fading away to miss them. That seems like pretty good proof Gruden was a big part of the problem.
WR Henry Ruggs
As for on-field play, Ruggs was great. He was really coming into his own. But if you’re looking at the team’s successes and failures this season no singular event affected them more than when Ruggs decided to get in his car drunk that night. Allegedly traveling at speeds of up to 156 miles per hour, resulting in a fiery crash that killed a young woman and her dog.
Ruggs ended two lives and destroyed his own. He also landed a gut punch to his teammates, who had to grapple with their emotions as well as the team now being without a major part of how it was functioning at a high level.
[vertical-gallery id=88751]