Oakland Raiders defensive coordinator Rob Ryan set the story straight Thursday, taking the blame for the team’s poor play on defense, and shooting down the notion that Al Davis dictates the defensive gameplanning.

“Put it on me, that’s where it belongs. I’m the man that runs the defense. I’m the man that played Tampa 2 three times and went to (bleep). OK, that’s me. I’m that guy,” Ryan said near the beginning of his nearly 20-minute session. “I’m the guy that that had a max pressure in the teeth of max protection and they hit a triple move on our corner, DeAngelo Hall. That’s not on him. That’s on me, for just a poor call.”

“When I deal with Al Davis, guys, it’s in the offseason,” Ryan said. “I’m just telling you the truth. I literally had one conversation with Mr. Davis last week, and it was about Fred Wakefield.”

One day prior, head coach Lane Kiffin distanced himself from the team’s poor defensive play, saying that Ryan and owner Al Davis are in constant communication, and that Kiffin let’s Rob “do his thing over there.”  

“Yeah, I’m not going to really get into if I was the defensive coordinator, what I would do, because that doesn’t really matter,” Kiffin said. “I’m the head coach. I oversee everything and I control what I can control. Do I have the exact belief we do on defense? No, but it’s hard to have the exact belief that we do.”

So here we are, Raider Nation, just one week into the regular season but the Silver & Black are in mid-season turmoil form, with a head coach and a defensive coordinator in the early stages of a power struggle. Only the coordinator is taking the fall, defending his players. And the coach is making excuses.

Source: InsideBayArea.com, Pressdemocrat.com. Sept. 11, 2008 – 10:58 p.m. et