Raiders WR Porter Made Good News and Bad

Over a very productive eight-year career with the Raiders, Jerry Porter made good and bad headlines.

Jerry Porter had a very productive eight-year career with the Oakland Raiders, but he is often remembered most for his run-ins with Coaches Jon Gruden and Art Shell.

Also, after the Raiders won the AFC West title in each of his first three seasons and lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 48-21, in Super Bowl XXXVII, they went 19-61 in Porter’s last five seasons with the team.

Of course, he didn’t help himself with the disputes with Gruden and Shell.

“I don’t know what it was with him,” Porter once said of Gruden. “He’s that fiery kind of guy and I’m not that guy. You would think that the two guys would be able to coexist well, but he was trying to turn me into a fiery, rah-rah guy that feeds off the way he coaches.

“He would ask me how I’m doing and he’d expect me to say: ‘Oh, great, Coach! I’m feeling great!’ My response to ‘How you doing?’ was: ‘Chillin’. I’m chillin.’ … He’s an abrasive guy, and our personalities clashed.

“Rookies, young guys—he leans on them. It’s nothing they’ve ever seen before. It’s tough, and it gets you to the point where I felt like I wanted to fight Gruden once.”

Porter’s problems with Shell came when the Raiders’ Hall of Fame tackle and head coach from 1983-84 returned as coach in 2006.

“They were asking me what I was going to do as far as the off-season program goes,” said Porter, referring to a conversation he was having with wide receivers coach Biletnikoff. “And I told them, ‘I just bought a place in Florida, so I’m going to go down to Florida and work with a trainer.'

“For one thing, I don’t like the way things are going around here.”

That’s when Shell chimed in with: “Who the f--- do you think you are? Who ... do you think you’re talking to?”

Porter received a four-game suspension from the Raiders for “conduct detrimental to the team” but the suspension later was reduced to two games.

The 6-1, 233-pound Porter was drafted by the Raiders in the second round (No. 43 overall) of the 2000 NFL Draft out of West Virginia, which he attended after playing quarterback, wide receiver, fullback, halfback, defensive end, and defensive back at Coolidge High in Washington, D.C.

And regardless of the problems Porter had with the Raiders' authority, he was productive.

After being the No. 3 receiver behind Tim Brown and Jerry Rice, in his first two seasons, Porter broke out in his third season by catching 51 passes for 688 yards, a 13.9-yard average per catch, and nine touchdowns in 2002.

Porter had his best seasons in 2004 when he started ahead of Rice caught 84 passes for 998 yards, a 15.6-yard average, with nine touchdowns, and in 2005, when he made 76 receptions for 942 yards and five scores. He had one more good season in 2007 when he made 44 receptions for 795 yards and six touchdowns.

In the Super Bowl loss to the Buccaneers and Gruden, who was now the coach for Tampa Bay, Porter made four receptions for 62 yards, including a 39-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Rich Gannon.

Porter ranks sixth in Raiders history with 550 receptions for 3,939 yards and 309 touchdowns in his career, plus 18 receptions for 292 yards and three scores in seven post-season games.

After being released by the Raiders, Porter played sparingly for the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2008 because of hamstring surgery and also played for the Washington Redskins in 2009. He signed with the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League in 2010 but did not play because of a torn hamstring sustained in training camp, and then he retired.

Just think of how good Porter would have been for the Raiders without all the drama.

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