Oakland Raiders

Day nine of camp Cable is now completely in the books. The defense once again won the day with Kirk Morrison and Ricky Brown both racking up numerous mythical sacks. (Can't tackle the quarterback, so the play continues.) The nature of the offensive line is taking shape, now that Mario Henderson is entrenched on the left side, and Barnes is out. Lorenzo Neal is having a major benefit to the team, and Derrick Burgess is no longer with the team.

* To update my earlier report, the Raiders received a 3rd round pick in 2010 and a 5th round pick in 2011 for Burgess, as opposed to both picks being from 2011 as I reported earlier.

* Offensive lineman Robert Gallery, who is one of the longest tenured Raider position players, (Kickers Sebastian Janikowski and Shane Lechler share the honor of the longest tenure, dating back to 2000 and the Jon Gruden regime) had nothing but praise for his teammate Mario Henderson, "He’s getting better. He’s taking big steps from last year and he’s just like everybody else out here, working on stuff he needs to and trying to win a job like everybody else on the team... I think Mario’s a professional, and just like the rest of us, he knows he’s got stuff to work on and he’s going to keep grinding and once I get back we’ll get our stuff down and we’ll be all right.”

* Kirk Morrison is determined to hold on to his job as starting mike linebacker, despite Ricky Brown making a push for that job. "That's what the whole camp is all about, it's competing. I've been a starter in this league for four years and my play kinda' speaks for itself, so I definitely understand that there's a competition thing, but I've been playing for a long long time and I understand all about it."

* Tight end Zach Miller is looking forward to being more of a receiver this season. "Yeah definitely. Just with the way the wideouts have been playing. They've been opening up a lot more things for me and that will continue to the season. With Heyward-Bey's speed and Murphy continuing and of course we have Chaz and Chaz is looking so much better than his rookie year last season. We're going to be a lot better at wideout." He has been getting less balls thrown his way, but he sees that as a positive for the offense as a whole, "That's definitely a good thing. I want him to get as much timing and as much trust in all those wideouts because teams can just bracket me, they can put guys on me to jam me, they can things like that. If we have wideouts that they're scared of or they have to pay attention to, that only opens me up more. So we'll get our throws and we'll get our thing going but I'd like to see the ball spread around as much as possible."

* Jay Richardson said that former teammate Burgess can not going to be replaced, but "we’ve got plenty of weapons here on this defense. We’ve got a lot of young guys, a lot of talent. We’re ready to go."

* Gallery also had praise for veteran fullback Lorenzo Neal, "He’s great. I mean, the guy was playing professional football when I was in junior high so that’s impressive. If you look up an NFL football player, a professional, his picture would be there. Everything he does, the way he goes about it, he’s probably almost 40 years old and he’s still hitting like he’s 20. He’s a great guy. He takes a lot of leadership, not only with the football but just talking and the type of guys he is. He cares, and he’s a great addition.”

* Mario Henderson said that it was bittersweet that his competition for the left tackle situation was won at the expense of an injury to teammate Khalif Barnes. However, Henderson is not taking it for granted that he will be automatically starting, "I mean, like I said, the position still ain’t mines yet, technically, because I still got work to do. But I mean, I treat it like he was still here. I go out there and work hard everyday, no matter who’s there, whether it’s a new guy or Khalif or whoever it is.”