ALAMEDA -- It's a riff on the old chicken-and-the-egg argument.Are Michael Bush and the Raiders offensive line simply wearing down, or are opposing defenses merely focusing on Oakland's running game because its offense became so one-dimensional with so many injured playmakers?In his first four games as the Raiders' featured back in taking over for the injured Darren McFadden, Bush ran the ball 96 times for 461 yards, an average of 4.8 yards per carry.In the last three games, with the Raiders missing McFadden, Denarius Moore, Jacoby Ford and Taiwan Jones, Bush has been limited to 165 yards on 57 carries, a sickly 2.9 yards per carry."I think after a period of time people end up trying to take away what you've done best, and what we've done best is run the football," said Oakland offensive coordinator Al Saunders. "So a lot of the schemes and things we've faced have been designed to take him away, and then we've become one-dimensional because of the score."
The past two weeks, in Miami and Green Bay, the Raiders fell behind 34-0 each time and thus, had to abandon the run."I think it's a combination of things, but if we can get untracked early and get Mike in a rhythm," Saunders said before pausing, "you need to get two guys in a rhythm initially. You need to get the running back and the quarterback in rhythm so you can have a balanced attack. I think we see as this game unfolds and the games in the future unfold, hopefully well be able to get him back on track again."When the score kind of gets skewed in the other direction early in a game, you get out of the basic run philosophy that you started with. I think that is probably a two-edged sword in what we were looking at."
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