The Big Gradkowski comes to Oakland

Now is the time of the (football) year for waiver transactions: Immediately after the final ticks of the Super Bowl, NFL franchises get down to business in tweaking the lower realms of their rosters. Signing very temporarily will be the guys we won’t see in print until the “fighting the bust label”/“still struggling to find a place in the NFL” story at the start of mini-camps and the sad transaction note in late August.

Enter Bruce Gradkowski, the newest member of the Oakland Raiders and presumptive third-string quarterback.

Gradkowski was claimed off waivers by the Raiders on Tuesday. The QB was last seen with the Cleveland Browns, with whom he was listed as the fourth-stringer. No one can blame you if you blinked and therefore missed the Gradkowski Era in Cleveland; most of us recall Gradkowski as the guy getting psychologically denuded by now-jobless Jon Gruden back in 2006 and parts of 2007.

Poor old “Bruce Almighty” will indeed become one of those “struggling to find a place” tales with the Raiders in a couple of months, and unfortunately it seems Gradkowski will never live up to expectations based on a couple of fantastic seasons with University of Toledo.

After a couple of statistically gaudy, record-breaking years for the Mid-American Conference school in 2003 and ’04, Gradkowski managed to sneak into the 2006 NFL draft and land with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Round 6. After lots of roster shuffling, injuries and general chaos, Gradkowski ended up as the starter for the low-watt 2006 Bucs and performed like ... a rookie, completing 54 percent of passes, and tossing nine interceptions against nine TDs in 11 starts.

Worse still, his pitiful 65.86 QB rating of 2006 would end up his top performance managed thus far. In 2007, he rarely played for Tampa Bay and began the free-falling process of the bottom-feeding free agent. Not quite able to stick with the St. Louis Rams into the regular season, Gradkowski spent three months unemployed before landing with the Browns as a contingency plan after Derek Anderson and Brady Quinn were knocked out thanks to injury, and was pressed into action went third-stringer Ken Dorsey went down.

So what can Gradkowski do for the Raiders? Merely sticking around might be a plus. Heaven forbid the man should actually get any quality time on the field in 2009, but the way the Raiders have messed with the depth chart at quarterback throughout this decade is positively wack: Come on, seven different starters (eight if you count Rick Mirer) since Rich Gannon?

Welcome aboard, Mr. Gradkowski, and good luck making the Raiders. It might be nice to have some stability at the helm, even if a bit far down in priority.

(And hey, at least he’s not Marques Tuiasosopo.)

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