Who will be the center of attention?

There’s no dispute in Napa, Calif., over who will be the second Oakland Raider to touch the football on offense this season. That’s -- pending a bona fide catastrophe -- 22-year-old quarterback JaMarcus Russell. There’s plenty of discussion, though, over who will be the first.Head coach Lane Kiffin, 33, and his young 4 Brett Favre Purple jersey
Raiders opened training camp just last Thursday. They’ve had plenty of time, however, to make three different centers all appear as potential starters for the ‘08 season. Who will actually be the first offensive player to touch the ball in Week 1 for the silver and black, though, is still a tossup.Two of the three nominees for the starting job -- 33-year-old John Wade and 25-year-old Chris Morris -- have spent the opening few days of training camp splitting the first-team duties at the position. Meanwhile, the final candidate, 28-year-old Jake Grove, has been spending time on the sidelines resting an injured knee.Despite not handling a single snap, though, the recovering Grove already assured the Mercury News, “I’m planning on starting.”The center spot immediately became a camp tossup when veteran lineman Jeremy Newberry signed with the San Diego Chargers on June 2 after starting 14 games with Oakland last season. Prior to Newberry’s arrival from San Francisco, Grove manned the center position for the Raiders, starting all of the team’s games two years ago and a half-season in 2005.Now, though, Grove is no sure lock to be the team’s starter this season.Oakland signed 11-year veteran John Wade in March to fill the veteran void Newberry left behind. Wade, who has equally divided his 10-year career with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has started 106 of his 126 career games since entering the NFL in 1998 and has never allowed more than 3? sacks in a single season. He has a résumé very similar to Newberry’s, which isn’t a good sign for the 300-pound Grove, who lost his job to the older veteran last season.There’s also the young wild-card -- one who has patiently and quietly spent two years on Oakland’s roster just waiting for an opportunity like this to arise.Former Michigan State standout and 2006 seventh-rounder Chris Morris has seen as much time with the first team as any Raider center during offseason workouts and minicamps this year. The third-year lineman has only seen action on special teams and in a handful of plays at left guard (once replacing an injured Robert Gallery) in his short career, but he was known as a very reliable center with the Spartans, surrendering only one sack over his final two college seasons.With Grove nursing a longtime knee injury that's nagged him and Wade still learning O-line coach Tom Cable’s blocking scheme, Morris has been given a great opportunity to finally move up on the team’s depth chart.“I hope [the center position] decides itself,” Kiffin said Saturday after two practice sessions. “I am not going to put a date on it and make the wrong decision. I can’t figure out that date that it’s going to be them showing it to us. Obviously, we are not going to know that until we get into the preseason.”Though, with past experience at center for Oakland (34 starts, to be exact), early hints from Kiffin point to Grove being the early favorite to take home the prize.“Jake right now isn't practicing two times a day, so that is a concern with us, but we have time to get him back into it. He looks great. He is stronger and quicker than he has been since we have been here,” Kiffin said. “The people that have been here a long time say the Jets 6 Sanchez Jersey
same thing, all the way back to when they picked him in the second round.”“We know he can play well in this system,” the second-year coach added.With plenty of time before his team’s Sept. 8 kickoff, Kiffin certainly will have no problem dealing with a three-horse race.Especially when it involves three 300-pound workhorse offensive linemen.Anthony Carroll can be contacted at Training Camp: An entirely new kind of fantasy game! (24)