And so it starts. Underclassmen have until January 15th to declare their eligibility for the 2011 draft, and it’s already starting. University of Maryland wide receiver Torrey Smith has announced on his Twitter page that he’s done with the NCAA and is going to head to the NFL.

“I’m forgoing my last year of eligibility to enter the nfl draft #terpnation and all supporters I appreciate your support,” he tweets.

He’s 6′ 1″ and 205 lbs. While he didn’t do much in tonight’s bowl game against East Carolina (that’s who I think it was against. I really don’t give a rat’s petute about that part of the story being accurate. If you care enough about who they played, you’d already be armed with that information).

Smith is big and fast and will undoubtedly be compared to Darrius Heyward-Bey, who is by far the worst receiver taken in the first round of the 2009 NFL draft despite being the first guy off the board. However, that’s not really fair since Smith actually has had decent production in college. Remember DHB, was all 40 time and no actual….you know….production on the football field.

It’s early, but some are projecting Smith as a late first-round pick/early second rounder. Then again, that’s what they said about DHB and Al Davis changed all that with wave of his magic draft wand.

We’ve been saying for a while now that Oakland Raiders WR Louis Murphy is the Raider receiver to won in fantasy football. Everything we’ve seen and heard points to that, and Jerry McDonald of the Oakland Tribune supported that in a live chat on the paper’s website today.

According to McDonald, Murphy will most likely lead the Raiders in receiving yards and touchdowns this year.

He’s finally secured the flanker spot and is light years ahead of Darrius Heyward-Bey. That’s not good news for the seventh-overall pick in last year’s draft. Chaz Schilens is a little banged up and will get some balls when he returns, but we advise taking Murphy.

We did a deep draft last night and grabbed Murphy in the 21st round. How thrilled were we? Expect everyone (except probably Darren McFadden and Heyward-Bey) to be better for the Raiders now that they finally have a decent QB in Jason Campbell.

According to beat writer Jerry McDonald of the Oakland Tribune, the Oakland Raiders first-round pick from a year ago is starting to get it. He says that Darrius Heyward-Bey is looking a lot better than he did last year.

“Can’t roll my eyes anymore when Tom Cable tells how much Darrius Heyward-Bey has improved,” McDonald writes. “Best practice I’ve ever seen him have, and there isn’t anything else that’s even a close second.”

He adds that “Cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha said it was the best he’d seen Heyward-Bey play.”

Well, he better improve because almost all of the receivers taken after him in the first round have been pretty good. Jeremy Maclin, Percy Harvin, Kenny Britt, Hakeem Nicks and Michael Crabtree all look like better prospects at this point.

It’s still early and maybe Heyward-Bey will show significant improvement this season. Somehow, though, we doubt it.

We came across several items for the Oakland Raiders recently and since not all of them are worthy of their own post, we thought we’d put some bullet points together. Of course you saw that they acquired Kamerion Wimbley from the Browns yesterday, but here are some others:

-The team has brought back QB Bruce Gradkowski on a one-year, $1.759 million contract. He is small and doesn’t have a great arm, but he’s a fiery leader who tends to produce positive results. They say there will be a QB competition, but if the coaches (and players) have any say, then Gradkowski will probably start in 2010. If Al Davis is calling the shots, then welcome to another year of JaMarcus Russell. We think that Davis would be wise to cut him loose now in the uncapped year when there would be no cap consequences.

-The Raiders re-signed QB Charlie Frye to a one-year, $1.226 million contract. Frye completed 60.9% of his passes, but frequently got starts over JaMarcus Russell (not saying much). He’ll probably be no more than the third QB this year, but you never know depending on how pissed off the coaches are at JaMarcus.

-Darrius Heyward-Bey has confirmed that the foot injury that sidelined him last season has healed. How about his hands? Have those been fixed yet? He’s expected to start again this year after catching nine passes in eight games last year. This hurts worse when you rattle off the names taken after him: Michael Crabtree, Jeremy Maclin, Percy Harvin, Hakeem Nicks, Kenny Britt.

-The team is moving Johnathan Holland back to wide receiver after an experiment last year at cornerback. The good news is that he had 550 yards in kick returns. Otherwise, nothing says you are one step from out of the league when teams change your position like that.

Oakland Raiders WR Darrius Heyward-Bey took a less-is-more attitude towards the New York Giants this week. He’s pretty much taken that approach to every game he’s played this year. The #7-overall pick once again caught zero passes in an NFL football game.

To date, he has caught two passes for 36 yards, showing the world why Al Davis had such faith in him at the seven slot in the draft.

We aren’t trying to pile on the Raiders but they make it so damn easy. They selected DHB over Michael Crabtree (despite his lengthy, ugly holdout, he still only has two less catches than DHB), Jeremy Maclin (caught as many TD passes today (2) as DHB has regular catches all year), Percy Harvin (becoming a serious threat in Minnesota) and Hakeem Nicks (another TD pass today gives him two on the year and he was out for several games).

Ouch!

The NFL might have to do something here. The Raiders are making poor decision (taking DHB #7) after poor decision (continuing to stick with JaMarcus Russell) and it’s not fair to their loyal fans. No wonder their fans are so violent in the Black Hole.

It doesn’t get any easier as they host the Philadelphia Eagles next week in Oakland.

Oh here we go again. Looks like we are ragging on DHB again. Again, we have nothing against this kid, we just think #7-overall was way too high for him to be drafted. On Monday night against the Chargers, Oakland Raiders WR Darrius Heyward-Bey was thrown the ball twice and he dropped it both times. Seriously. But what does he think about his performance?

“Did some good things, did some bad things,” Heyward-Bey said. “Pretty good grade but could be better. For the first game, it was solid.”

He says it’s because his just being out there changes things for his offense. His speed makes the safety account for him and that helps everyone.

“I’m just sitting back doing my job,” Heyward-Bey said. “That’s my job in this offense. That’s what I do.”

Your job as the #7-overall pick is to be a decoy and not catch the ball and make plays? Has someone told Al Davis this already or does he already know it? Just curious.

“When we watch film, that’s what I’m doing, my job,” Heyward-Bey said. “I don’t really care what anybody else thinks. As long as coaches see I’m doing the job they want me to do – they’re the ones paying me.”

What friggin’ film are you watching?!

“I’m not even thinking about the first catch,” Heyward-Bey said as he continued to sound more and more like he doesn’t understand the role of a high-end receiver. “People want to see the stats. Everyone wants to see the big numbers. But reality is, if you come in, put in the work and help the team win …

“If you look at it that way, it’s great. If you look at it the other way, you’re like ‘When is it going to happen?’ ”

Right, help the team win, Darrius. You didn’t win! You lost Monday night! You might want to save the “I did my job to help the team win” crap until after you actually win a game. It sounds better then. Sheesh.

Look at us posting something positive on the Raiders. To all the Raiders fans out there that constantly flood our inbox with emails calling us Raider haters, well here is our chance to show you we aren’t. For some reason unbeknownst to us, we like to rail on Darrius Heyward-Bey. It’s probably because he was picked so much higher than he should have been, but that’s not his fault. It’s also not our fault for continuing to bash him (not to his face though. That we admit we wouldn’t do).

So anyway, it seems like he’s starting to catch a few more passes in practice and flash some glimpses of hope.

“He had a great day of catching the ball,” coach Tom Cable said. “Right after he caught it, I said to him, ‘Your mistake is you showed me you can do that and, so now, the expectation goes up. That’s who you are. That’s what you’re capable of.’ ”

This includes a catch he made while running to his right and reaching behind himself while falling down to snag a pass over the middle.

“It’s a catch that needed to be made,” Heyward-Bey said as though he hasn’t been personally responsible for some 3,000 practice balls hitting the carpet. “Ran a play, caught it, whatever.”

Whatever. I do it all the time. I do what I want. Whatever.

The news sounds encouraging for DHB, but we still wouldn’t hand him an infant out of a first-floor burning window.

Alvin Keels, the agent for #6-overall pick Andre Smith, will meet with Cincinnati Bengals team officials on Sunday to see if they can get any closer to a resolution that would get Smith signed and into camp. We have a feeling it won’t matter.

We all know how stupid Michael Crabtree is being in San Francisco (or… not in San Francisco) wanting more than Darrius Heyward-Bey got at the #7-overall slot. That’s just stupid. You haven’t done anything at the NFL level other than cry when you were scolded for running at OTA’s without medical clearance.

MAKE YOUR OWN PHOTO CAPTION IN THE COMMENTS

Well, while there were some early reports before the draft that Andre Smith could potentially be a handful (and we aren’t just talking about his wonderful, bouncy breasts), he doesn’t seem to be the problem in this case. Executive vice president Katie Blackburn and the Bengals front office, however, do seem to be the problem.

They don’t want to pay him more than Heyward-Bey got, despite the fact that Smith was selected just in front of him.

Can the Bengals be this stupid? Apparently, a quick glance at their performance over the past, oh…I don’t know….almost 20 years, says that they can. There is a reason they lose every year and it’s not just because they are a halfway house for criminals. They do stupid stuff like ignore the slotting system.

So, don’t expect this meeting with the Bengals to produce much. We think it will go like this:

Keels: “We think it’s only fair to be paid less than the #5-overall pick, and more than the #7-overall pick.”

Blackburn: “No.”

Keels: “Lunchtime yet?”

Very productive. This is why the Bengals have all those Super Bowl trophies.

This isn’t good. Oakland Raiders WR Chaz Schilens was having a nice camp and was the team’s #1 wide receiver at this point. Now, it seems that he has broken the fifth metatarsal in his foot and the Raiders don’t know when he’ll be back.

Jerry McDonald announced this on Twitter:

“Repeat . . . Schilens says broken fifth metatarsal . . . doesn’t know time frame. Was their best player in camp overall,” he tweeted.

We have to imagine that he’ll be out at least 4-6 weeks. And we guess this means that Javon Walker and Darrius Heyward-Bey will be the opening day starters with Johnnie Lee Higgins in the slot. Or something like that.

You can go ahead and downgrade JaMarcus Russell even further on your fantasy draft board. Not sure if your board has any more room for him to slide down.

Actually, we should say Darrius Heyward-Bey is just not catching much of anything. In his attempt to wow the coaches at training camp, he might be pressing a little bit which is leading to a lot of footballs hitting the carpet. But, despite the hamstring injuries and dropped passes, Raiders head coach Tom Cable doesn’t seem all that concerned.

Photo Caption: Spoiler Alert!!! This ball hits the ground 1.2 seconds later.

“He understands his job is to catch footballs,” Cable said, “and for him it is just a process of gaining confidence and getting comfortable every day at this level. And he is doing that by leaps and bounds. I am really not worried about it. He is just pressing. He just wants to impress you.”

Heyward-Bey is a little frustrated, but thinks he’ll be fine.

“When you drop a ball, you get frustrated, you say, ‘Ah,’ but you got to shake it off, go on to the next one,” said Heyward-Bey, who dropped four passes on Monday. “I wouldn’t say I’m pressing. I’m just trying to work through the kinks. That’s football, it happens.”

It’s not that we are trying to be tough on Heyward-Bey or the Raiders, but there is a reason that no one else saw this guy as the #7-overall pick and worthy of $23.5 million in guaranteed money. He could be fine at some point and he could go on to light up the league. But as of right this second, he’s done nothing but make people think this is destined to turn out poorly.

So far, Heyward-Bey is Troy Williamson II.

UPDATE: Heyward-Bey dropped three more in Tuesday morning practices.

Ah, the good ol’ Oakland Raiders. Beat writer Jerry McDonald says that right now Johnny Lee Higgins and Chaz Schilens are slated to be the starting wide receivers for the Raiders. That means that they have a #7-overall pick (Darrius Heyward-Bey) and a big money guy (they gave Javon Walker $16 million guaranteed last year, but in all fairness they did restructure) on the bench.

And it seems like rookie fourth-round pick Louis Murphy actually has a better chance to contribute right away than Walker and Heyward-Bey.

The latter was considered an iffy pick this year by just about everyone on Earth with opposable thumbs. He didn’t have very good production at Maryland, but he is extremely fast. That was all Al Davis had to see apparently. And now he’s been dealing with hamstring issues so he’s falling behind for sure.

Photo Caption: Pop!

We’d expect either Murphy, Heyward-Bey or Walker to contribute something at some point, but as of right now, none have cracked the starting lineup.