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Man, this is a great article. Really appreciate you writing this. Fans and/or general public can be so quick to judge. Player gets paid X, I can say whatever I want. Doesn’t make it right.

Seems like JR had a lot of headwinds and nobody was stepping in to help him right the ship. Amazing the difference coaches, systems and O-lines can make for those first few years of an NFL QB’s career.

Great read. Keep bringing it. 👊

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Thanks Matt!

There were a lot of headwinds for JaMarcus. I think the world was determined to ensure that it would not work out for him as a player, but despite all of that, here we see him not just winning, but beating three winning teams, and coming close to beating a fourth, with stats that make you think the future is bright. It was too glaring of an omission from the public narrative for me to leave alone, and makes me wonder if similar things have happened to other rookies too...

The way this situation ended makes me wonder how this would've gone if Al Davis were ten years younger. He's the only one in this whole equation that seemed to care about JaMarcus. Maybe if he could've been around as much as he used to be, this all could've gone differently, but that's the JaMarcus Russell story. Every poor circumstance you can think of, all rolled into one.

Thank you Matt for your kind words! I'm really happy you enjoyed it. Hopefully we can all heed the call to action, and put more JaMarcus Russell positivity into the world!

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