Lane Kiffin

No site oficial do Oakland Raiders (www.raiders.com) tem uma entrevista com Lane Kiffin sobre a escolha de Darren McFadden. Kiffin tinha dito na media anteriormente que o Raiders não iria de Running Back no draft, no primeiro round. Bom, de fato, foi uma jogada, um smokescreen como se diz na liga, de Kiffin e Al Davis.
Estava planejado a meses que o draftado seria McFadden, o único caso em que ele não viria para o Raiders seria se algum time o draftasse antes, e o Raiders não tivesse como subir mais posições para evitar a perda do Running Back da universidade de Arkansas. Segue uma parte da entrevista (em inglês), onde Lane Kiffin fala sobre a escolha de DMF:

Pergunta: You said on Thursday that a running back wasn’t necessarily a need but if a star is there that you just can’t pass you would try to take him. Was that the case with McFadden?

Head Coach Lane Kiffin: That was definitely the case. I mentioned a number of times that a running back was not a need and it wasn’t. We [have] a number of really good running backs and guys coming back including Michael Bush. who we don’t even know enough about yet. So it was not a need but it became a situation and something that, speaking for myself, I knew months ago this was the guy that we had to have. We had to figure out a way to get him and hopefully he was going to fall to us. We lost the coin toss to move to us to four and that scared me a little bit there. But fortunately he was still available and we got everybody on the same page.

Pergunta: How heavy was the action from other teams looking to trade up for that pick and from the teams calling, was your idea that they were after McFadden as well?

Kiffin: Not necessarily. I think more teams were after [DT Glenn] Dorsey right there. There were more teams that had a need for a defensive tackle and a player like Dorsey. There was at least one deal that we had in place where, if Darren wasn’t there, we would go back but once he was there, no one jumped us to get him, then it became easy. We were prepared to go back if he was not there or if he would have been taken right before us.