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The Raiders named Greg Knapp their OC under new head coach Dennis Allen. As you may recall, Knapp served as OC for the Raiders in 2007 and 2008 during the first few years of JaMarcus Russell and Lane Kiffin. Knapp is getting a lot of credit for his work in Houston this past year as the QB coach, where he was supposedly the guy that was able to get T.J. Yates to a level where he could be effective.

Allen and Knapp served as assistants here in Atlanta in '04 and '05. Allen was the defensive quality control coach here under Jim Mora.

We all know Knapp is a conservative play-caller, but he generally has gotten good results out of most of the QBs he coached, with exception of Michael Vick. Sure, you say JaMarcus Russell, but Russell was a much more effective QB in '08 when Knapp & Kiffin were there than he was in '09 with Tom Cable and Ted Tollner. Although Cable did take away the play-calling duties from Knapp midway thru the '08 season when Kiffin was fired, so he may not get full credit for that.

I dont think that Knapp and Palmer are a good fit Palmer would benefit from a more vertical passing game and the Raiders do not have one receiver on their team that is a good route runner. I guess time will tell but IMO bringing Knapp in as the OC is going to take away the best thing that Palmer offers as a strong armed vertical passer.

Knapp does seem to get better results with veteran QBs like Hasselbeck, Garcia, and Schaub. So I think he and Palmer should be OK.

But the Raiders are still going to be a run-first team with Knapp calling the shots. The interesting thing will be if the odds that they deal McFadden this off-season go up or go down now that Knapp is there. They did draft D-Mac in '08, Knapp's last year there. But that year was the last year that Justin Fargas was the #1 RB.

Barring Dennis Allen is some great motivator, I don't see Oakland really doing much more than they have over the past two years, which is being a very talented team, but without the coaching and/or character to really coalesce that into a playoff team.

I guess ultimately, it will probably come down to how well Knapp and Palmer work together to get their OK receivers to play at a high level. Moore, DHB, Murphy, and Ford would all be good No. 2 and No. 3 WRs on most teams. The question is will one of them emerge to be the occasional No. 1 option they will need to take their passing attack to the next level.

Jason Campbell relegated to backup status? He was doing well before getting hurt.

It is amazing what happens when that guy gets to work with the same OC for more than one year. It's a shame too. I'd like to Campbell come here to Atlanta, but I'm assuming some team tries to sign him to start, which won't be the case here. So he probably winds up in a place like Miami or Jacksonville.

Yeah, he had multiple OCs here at Auburn too. Seems like I recall them saying he had had new OCs every year in HS and college or something like that. Pretty quick study, to say the least. i really wasn't all that impressed with him hi sfirst year or so here a she always seems a little "stiff" for lack of a better word but in his senior season he really shined. Very cool headed with an accurate arm. He used to visit my wife's school and was a really gentlemanly guy that everyone seemed to like. He may be a sort of Matt Ryan type guy that just doesn't seem to have the swagger you like to see in a QB but given the right conditions could be pretty successful. I don't know if anyone can do much in DC.

Campbell is that type of QB in the Kyle Orton mold that you can win with if you put talent around him. He's the type of guy that you pick up and start him for 2-3 years until the guy you drafted is ready to be the starter.

One of the biggest negatives about Campbell is how poor a vertical passer he is despite his strong arm. But I'm betting that if Mike Shanahan can have a do-over, he would have kept Campbell 2 years ago given all the issues he's had at QB since he decided to let him go. Campbell wasn't very good in '09, but the Redskins O-line was atrocious.