JaMarcus Russell Will Likely Miss Tomorrow’s Game With Panthers

Every now and then, even the worst teams in football catch a little good luck. The Oakland Raiders may have had such a stroke yesterday when right knee tendinitis forced JaMarcus Russell out of practice and, Chris Mortensen reports, out of Sunday's game with the Carolina Panthers.

It's an awfully convenient bit of timing for Russell and the Raiders. The team would have been well within its rights to show Russell to the bench after he turned in one of the worst quarterbacking performances in modern history against Atlanta last weekend. Russell went 6-of-19 with an interception, the nadir of a season that's been one long struggle for him.

Not all of it has been Russell's fault, he's been sacked 22 times and doesn't exactly have the 80's 49ers for offensive teammates. That mix of internal and external fault means that it might not be the worst thing if Russell took a week off to catch his breath before finishing off the rest of the season. Mixed in among the disasters have been a couple of good performances to use as beacons of hope for the future.

That may be good news for the Raiders in the long term, but in the short term it means Andrew Walter is back under center. That will probably work out about as well as it has in the past, but anything's possible. The Raiders might even score this week.