When owner Al Davis wasted his first-round draft pick a few years back on a kicker with a criminal past (Sebastian Janakowski) I knew he had lost whatever sanity and good judgment he has once possessed. (Janakowski turned out average, at best). No way Davis would've made such a move in his prime.
Long gone are the days when Davis could proudly (and accurately) state that the Raiders have the highest winning percentage of any franchise in the history of professional sports.
Actually taking a kicker for his first round pick was the right move. The season before the team had gone 8-8 and lost 4 of those games by less than 3 points and had missed field goals in all 4, also their opponents had the best average starting field position in the league thanks to a horde of short kickoffs. The team would have gone to the playoffs with a better kicking game. While the kicker picked turned out to be not so good picking a kicker was the right move.