When you’re failing badly, the first thing you should look at is yourself. The Oakland Raiders’ former quarterback JaMarcus Russell(notes) has apparently not learned that life lesson yet. Russell is blaming his failed NFL career on everyone but himself.

JaMarcus Russell
Wikimedia Commonas

The only person who has any control of what happens in their life is that person. Russell was released by the Raiders over a year ago, after winning only seven of the 25 games he started in. But he blames Oakland’s former coach, Tom Cable, for betraying him and his Raiders’ teammates for a lack of support.

Russell also complained that he had to be there at 6:30 a.m. before practice and spend time on the treadmill. Afterwards, while the team watched film, Russell would fall asleep. He says he was later tested and discovered to have sleep apnea.

Is it any wonder that his teammates felt that their quarterback just didn’t care? When his coach asked him what he was doing at night he said he was, “just chilling.”

At the end of 2009 when Russell was benched after playing atrociously, he dug his own grave by saying he would refuse a pay cut to stay in Oakland. Russell finished the season with the lowest quarterback rating in the NFL. He also had the fewest passing yards, fewest touchdowns and lowest completion percentage.

In March of 2010, he allegedly arrived at the Raiders’ mini-camp weighing nearly 300 pounds. I suppose he is blaming Cable for that one too. Or maybe sleep apnea? Russell was released in May.

Russell says he is serious about getting back and playing in the NFL, but he won’t consider options that have been presented to him that would allow him to prove himself and rebuild his reputation, including the UFL and CFL.

Sounds like the 26-year-old needs to take a look in the mirror and see what he needs to change inside himself. He may need a complete attitude turnaround as well as medical intervention for his sleep apnea, or his most likely path will be one where Russell is soon forgotten, and any chance at a football career has completely faded away.

K.C. Dermody grew up in the Bay Area of California, and has been an Oakland Raiders fan from the time she could walk. She has continued her loyalty to the team through its many ups and downs over the decades, and has been privileged to meet several of her favorite players, including famed quarterback, Jim Plunkett .

More from this contributor:

Oakland Raiders Fan: A Look Back at the Last Three and the Next Three Scheduled Games

Oakland Raiders’ Hue Jackson Takes the Blame for Horrific Loss: Fan’s Look

Oakland Raiders fan: A win for Al against the Texans

Note: This article was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Sign up here to start publishing your own sports content.

ALAMEDA, Calif. — The days of shoddy quarterback play, overmatched coaches, wasted draft picks and free agency blunders appear to be over in the Bay Area.

For eight years, the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders had far more than their share of each of those to contribute to a playoff drought in what had for decades been one of the NFL’s most successful regions.

Led by energetic first-year coaches in San Francisco’s Jim Harbaugh and Oakland’s Hue Jackson, the 49ers and Raiders finally appear ready to escape a nearly decade-long stretch of losing and compete for championships, which used to be so routine around here.

The 49ers (5-1) have been the surprise of the NFL with a fast start that has included three wins in the Eastern time zone and a 2½-game lead in the NFC West.

The Raiders (4-2) are in the thick of the race in the AFC West with quality wins over the Jets and Houston and now have a potential big-time quarterback in the fold after trading for Carson Palmer.

“There’s an excitement that the Raiders and 49ers are back,” said NFL Network analyst and former 49ers coach Steve Mariucci, who still lives in the Bay Area. “I hear more of that now. There should be an excitement. It’s well deserved. This is good for the entire league and obviously it’s good for the Bay Area because the Bay Area loves its football.”

There was plenty to love in the past, from the dominant teams of the 1960s and ‘70s that Al Davis built in Oakland to the 1980s dynasty started in San Francisco by Bill Walsh and Joe Montana.

In a 19-year period starting in 1976, the Raiders and Niners combined for eight Super Bowl titles, including one for the Raiders in Los Angeles; 16 division championships; 22 playoff berths and 33 postseason wins.

But since both teams made it to the playoffs in 2001 and ‘02, with the Raiders winning the AFC title that second season, there has only been failure.

The teams combined for an 83-173 record the past eight years, with Oakland ranking 31st in the league with 37 wins and San Francisco only slightly better at 29th with 46 victories.

Neither team posted a winning record in that stretch and there were four seasons where the teams combined for nine or fewer wins — a total already reached before the halfway point this season.

“Well, we’re both off to good starts,” Harbaugh said. “I don’t know how much it means right now. … We’ll look up in December, see how many we have and see how many we need.”

For most of this stretch of losing, the only time the national spotlight shined on the Bay Area was for ridicule: bizarre news conferences in Oakland to fire old coaches; sideline fights between players and coaches in San Francisco; coaching and personnel decisions that bordered on the ridiculous.

Both teams made their share of big personnel mistakes that led to this losing, from the Raiders using the No. 1 overall pick to draft JaMarcus Russell in 2007, trading for DeAngelo Hall and then cutting him after eight games, and signing Javon Walker to a $55 million contract.

The Oakland Raiders acquired
quarterback Carson Palmer from the Cincinnati Bengals two days
after starter Jason Campbell broke his collarbone.

In exchange for Palmer, the Bengals get two draft picks
from Oakland — a first-round choice in 2012 and a second-round
selection in 2013.

Palmer, a two-time Pro Bowl selection, hasn’t played since
after requesting a trade from the Bengals after a 4-12 record
last season. Palmer told Cincinnati television station WCPO in
March that he’d rather retire than return to the Bengals, who
replaced him with rookie Andy Dalton and have a 4-2 record this
year.

“Several factors made us believe that trading Carson to
Oakland was the best move for the Bengals at this time,” Bengals
President Mike Brown said in a release. “The principal
development has been Andy Dalton, who has shown himself to be
one of the best and most exciting young quarterbacks in the NFL.
We have a good, young football team, and Andy can be the
cornerstone of that team for a long time.”

Palmer, 31, had 22,694 passing yards and 154 touchdown
throws over seven seasons in Cincinnati and gives the Raiders an
experienced replacement for Campbell, who had led the team to a
4-2 start.

Oakland, which featured quarterbacks such as Daryle Lamonica, Ken Stabler and Jim Plunkett in the 1970s and ‘80s,
hasn’t finished with a winning record or made the National
Football League playoffs since the 2002 season.

When Campbell was injured in last week’s win over
Cleveland, the Raiders’ remaining quarterbacks were Kyle Boller
and Terrelle Pryor. The Raiders last year released quarterback
JaMarcus Russell, the No. 1 pick in the 2007 draft, after he won
seven games in three seasons with the team.

By trading next year’s first-round pick for Palmer, the
Raiders would be left with only fifth- and sixth-round
selections in 2012. Oakland previously dealt a fourth-round pick
to the Washington Redskins to acquire Campbell last year and
gave up their 2012 third-round choice to take Pryor out of Ohio
State in the NFL’s supplemental draft.

Palmer played at the University of Southern California and
was the first pick in the 2003 NFL draft. He’s agreed to
restructure the $118.75 million contract extension he signed
with the Bengals in 2005, ESPN said, citing unidentified people.

Palmer has been working out in Southern California with
former New York Jets quarterback Ken O’Brien, ESPN said. Palmer
previously worked with Raiders coach Hue Jackson in Cincinnati,
where Jackson was the Bengals’ receivers coach from 2004 to
2006.

Palmer passed for 3,970 yards, 26 touchdowns and 20
interceptions for the Bengals last season. He was voted to the
Pro Bowl for the first time in 2005, when he threw for 32
touchdowns and 12 interceptions to lead Cincinnati to an 11-5
record, and topped 4,000 passing yards in each of the next two
seasons. Palmer had a 46-51 record as the Bengals’ starter.

The NFL’s trade deadline is at 4 p.m. New York time today.
The St. Louis Rams yesterday acquired wide receiver Brandon Lloyd from the Denver Broncos for a 2012 draft pick.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Erik Matuszewski in New York at
matuszewski@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Michael Sillup at
msillup@bloomberg.net

They lead the league in penalties — as sure a sign as any that all is well in the NFL after a summer full of trouble.

They lead their division in wins, too — and love or hate the Silver and Black, it’s hard to deny that the name “Oakland Raiders” at the top of the standings is a good thing for a league long known for rewarding copycats and conformists.

The Raiders have never been accused of being either, and for the last nine years, they have paid a heavy price for doing things “The Raiduh Way,” as the owner, Al Davis, might say.

“Just Win Baby” and the “Commitment to Excellence” got buried somewhere in the rubble of seven straight double-digit-loss seasons.

The JaMarcus Russell experiment was a typically Raiders-like risk that crashed and burned.

Davis fired one coach (Lane Kiffin) and let his replacement (Tom Cable) go as well in a pair of unseemly episodes that made it seven coaches over 10 years.

But something funny happened while we were all laughing at — or worse yet, ignoring — the Raiders.

“Yes, I am getting a feeling I haven’t gotten around here in a long time,” said Tom Flores, the former coach, who works as a radio analyst for the Raiders and whose opinion is gilded with those two Super Bowl rings he won for the franchise in the 1980s.

Flores doesn’t meddle, doesn’t spend a lot of time in the inner sanctum. Not that he’s welcome there, anyway.

What he observes, however, is what most people can see: That Davis still runs the show.

The 82-year-old owner, using a walker but sharp as ever, according to the ex-coach, remains obsessed with speed on the outside and size in the middle. He is returning to the wise theory that any solid football team has to be built from the inside out and pieced together via the draft.

A look at the record (2-1) along with the roster shows that the owner is hitting more than he misses these days.

Three of his front seven on defence were drafted, one was signed as an undrafted rookie and two more were acquired by trading mid-round picks. His offensive line was built in a similar way. Richard Seymour on defence and Cooper Carlisle on offence were the high-profile free agents brought in to add veteran leadership.

“I prefer not to go after someone else’s dream or nightmare and try to rehabilitate them,” Flores said. “We used to do that when we were really good. But when you’re not, it can backfire and kill you. When we did it, it was one position, you get the guy, surround him with solid play. We got John Matuszak when he had nowhere else to go. We did the same with Lyle Alzado.”

Now those were some Raiders.

The memories of other colourful characters and their exploits — Stabler and the Holy Roller, Bilitnekoff and his Stickum, Allen and his reverse-the-field touchdown run — are fading a bit more each year, becoming “just stories around the campfire,” Flores said. There’s been no reason to fear, let alone glorify, the Raiders of late.

Flores was around when Oakland was becoming the “Raiduhs” — back in the 1960s, when the AFL was capturing America’s fancy and the second game of the televised doubleheader more often than not featured Oakland against somebody. It brought the Raiders a good East Coast following; Flores figures they may have been more popular there than they were by the Bay, where the 49ers were the headliners.

“We’d get off the bus in New York City and these fans knew who you were,” Flores said. “You’d walk around Oakland and they’d think you were a truck driver or something.”

But nobody is mistaking Darren McFadden for a truck driver these days. Considered another potential bust of Davis’ because of injuries that limited him in his first two seasons, McFadden is leading the league in rushing three weeks into his fourth.

Last week, he ran for 171 yards in a 34-24 win over the Jets that put the Raiders in a first-place tie with San Diego in the AFC West. Up next are the Patriots in the most meaningful matchup between the teams since the “Tuck Rule Game” back in 2002.

The Raiders go in with confidence — something in short supply in Oakland for years now. After the punishing win over the Jets, McFadden said Oakland’s new coach, Hue Jackson, “always tells us we’re building a bully.”

That’s how they like to be known.

The franchise and its owner have a prewired compulsion for stirring things up, starting decades ago with friction over the AFL-NFL merger, the moves in and out of Los Angeles, the antitrust lawsuits. It’s all punctuated by Davis’ penchant for picking up misfits and players in need of a second chance. (Most recent example: Terrelle Pryor, the former Ohio State QB, who starts his NFL career by serving a five-game suspension.)

Just a few months ago, when the NFL labour situation was settled, the vote was 31-0 in favour of the deal. The Raiders abstained.

Now if their play on the field can keep captivating (some) people the way their reputation always has, it might be time to crank up the classic NFL Films bit once again.

“The Autumn Wind is a Raider,” John Facenda’s booming voice tells us. “Pillaging for fun.”