ALAMEDA Clelin Ferrell Oakland Raiders Jersey , Calif. (AP) — Oakland Raiders defensive coordinator Paul Guenther denied there is any friction between him and coach Jon Gruden and said the two remain united in trying to improve a team that has been one of the biggest disappointments in the NFL this season.One week after cameras caught the two coaches getting into a heated exchange after a costly blown play in Oakland's 34-3 loss to the San Francisco 49ers, Guenther laughed about the incident and called it a daily occurrence."Jon and I fight every day upstairs, golf course, in the car, whatever it may be," Guenther said Thursday. "That's going to happen every Sunday. It's happened every Sunday, whether it's good or bad. That's just part of our expectations are higher than what we're showing. That's probably going to happen 100 times a game." Guenther's statement echoed comments made earlier this week by Gruden, who joked that the two have bigger disagreements on the golf course.The recent sideline exchanges between the coach and his hand-picked defensive coordinator have gotten more attention, however, as the Raiders have struggled through a 1-7 start.Both Gruden and Guenther have come under fire from fans and the media.Gruden has been targeted for the team's inconsistent offense and the radical roster changes being made, while Guenther's defense has been bad all season. The Raiders are on pace to give up 6,514 yards and are allowing opponents to gain a league-high 6.8 yards per play.While acknowledging frustration over the situation, Guenther — who spent the past 13 seasons in Cincinnati and was the Bengals' coordinator from 2014-17 — downplayed any suggestion of problems between him and Gruden."I love Jon, he's great to work with," Guenther said. "We're really trying to build this thing the right way and we have a vision for it. I know it doesn't look like that right now but I'm confident in what we're doing."The Raiders have made sweeping changes since Gruden was hired Cheap Clelin Ferrell Jersey , much of it on the defensive side.Khalil Mack, the team's top pass rusher and the 2016 Defensive Player of the Year, was traded to the Chicago Bears before the season opener in exchange for a pair of first-round draft picks. Oakland's best run defender, Justin Ellis, was lost to injured reserve with a foot injury he suffered in Week 1. Then last week, the Raiders released defensive end Bruce Irvin, one of the team captains.Those moves and others have forced Guenther to reach deep into the roster for help."That's just part of the business," Guenther said. "Our vision was to bring in some young guys in the draft and we did that and they're playing. Obviously we're going through some growing pains right now with the young guys but hopefully the more and more snaps that they get at the back end of this year going into year two, we're going to see massive improvement out of those guys."Still, Guenther acknowledged it hasn't been easy and said he's had to bite his lip a few times."There are certain things, breakdowns that we're having that we shouldn't have, that I'm not used to seeing," Guenther said. "It is a patience thing but I'm not the most patient guy. I want to get the stuff fixed quickly. That's part of the evaluation process with the guys that we have now moving forward the last eight games to see, hey, what guys we want to keep here and what guys we want to move on with."We have a vision. Jon and I have a vision of what it should look like and what it's going to look like down the road. Hopefully Clelin Ferrell Oakland Raiders Jersey , we can just keep getting better every week but it's certainly been a challenge."__ Antonio Brown isn’t the first guy to finagle a path out of Pittsburgh in recent years, but he needs to be the last.It’s now obvious that the Steelers lost this one, badly. For all the bluster about insisting on “significant compensation” for Brown and not rushing to trade him before a $2.5 million roster bonus comes due on March 17, the Steelers ultimately took the best deal they could get: A third-round pick and a fifth-round pick.Given that they got a third-round pick a year ago for receiver Martavis Bryant, they should have gotten far more than a three and a five for one of the best receivers in the league. And they didn’t, not just because Brown wanted to go but because the Steelers decided that they needed to him to leave. And they needed him to leave because they allowed him to morph into a guy who became a problem that only could be solved with a one-way ticket out of town.In 2010, Brown arrived as a sixth-round pick from Central Michigan. During Super Bowl week, I asked Cameron Heyward — a first-rounder in 2011 who had much better cause to act like a diva — how Brown became bigger than the team. “I don’t know how it happened,” Heyward said.It happened because management allowed it to happen, rewarding Brown financially in 2012, 2015, 2016, and 2017 while plenty of the things that came to light in recent years surely were going on, from tardiness to setting up his own off-campus residence during training camp. His last payday, which began with a $19 million signing bonus and continued with a 2018 restructuring bonus of nearly $13 million 2019 Cheap Clelin Ferrell Jersey , came only weeks after he opted to launch a Facebook Live stream from the locker room after a playoff win (capturing among other things coach Mike Tomlin referring to the Patriots as “assholes“), and after reports emerged of Brown pouting because he wasn’t getting the ball as much as he wanted it during the AFC title game.They can’t be surprised that Brown felt like the contract he received two years ago vindicated his antics. And they also can’t be surprised that players like Brown would think that misbehavior has its rewards. In 2014 (as Andrew Fillipponi reminded me during a Friday visit to his 93.7 The Fan afternoon-drive show), running back LeGarrette Blount seemed to orchestrate his release from the Steelers, so that he could return to the Patriots — something he didn’t deny when asked about it during the week preceding Super Bowl XLIX. Linebacker James Harrison reportedly slept his way out of Pittsburgh in 2017.Ultimately, this kind of stuff flows right back to Tomlin, who seat surely has gotten a lot hotter now that his mismanagement of Brown will result in the Steelers enduring a public humiliation, along with the loss of a highly talented player. But it also flows up the chain of command to ownership, which seems to have allowed the three-coaches-in-50-years thing to become so much of the franchise’s identity that Tomlin has never had to fear the ultimate consequence for failing to get the most out of one of the most talented teams in football.Moving forward, things must change. Who knows how many more Lombardi Trophies the Steelers would have won if true accountability had resided in that locker room over the last five years? Instead, the team that has become the embodiment of football accountability has now caught the Steelers with six Super Bowl wins, and that Patriots seem to be much better suited than the Steelers to be the first to No. 7.
