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Russell makes first appearance, but McCown leads Raiders

Dec 3, 2007 - 2:37 AM OAKLAND, California (Ticker) -- JaMarcus Russell finally made his first appearance in the NFL, but the Oakland Raiders leaned on Josh McCown to help them end their woes against the Denver Broncos.

McCown threw three touchdown passes and Justin Fargas ran for another Sunday as the Raiders posted a 34-20 victory over the Broncos in a battle between AFC West Division rivals.

"This is obviously the way that I think we all expected it to go," McCown said. "This is what we envisioned early on."

Fargas carried a career-high 33 times for 146 yards for Oakland, which snapped a five-game losing streak to Denver.

The first pick of this year's draft, Russell missed all of training camp because of a contract dispute and forced the Raiders to sign Daunte Culpepper as an insurance policy.

But with Culpepper out with a sore quadriceps, McCown got the start and Russell was elevated to the No. 2 quarterback. That is until early in the second quarter, when Russell made a brief appearance.

"That was right about where we wanted to put (Russell) in," Raiders coach Lane Kiffin said. "Give him a certain number of plays, let him move around, let him get a feel for it."

Russell replaced McCown with 13:48 left in the second and completed 4-of-7 passes for 56 yards in two series. He did not play the rest of the game, mostly because McCown played so well, finishing 14-of-21 for 141 yards.

"I'm happy for him (Russell)," McCown said. "He's the top pick, he is the future, they had been waiting a while for him to play and they were excited to see him."

"(Russell) did some good things," Kiffin said. "He threw the first ball right on the mark, you can see the arm strength, he moved around well, made classic first rookie mistakes."

With Oakland on the verge of squandering a two-touchdown lead, McCown responded by leading a six-play, 45-yard drive that was capped by a 44-yard field goal from Sebastian Janikowski to make the score 27-20.

On the ensuing drive, cornerback Fabian Washington made a diving interception of a pass from Jay Cutler at the Denver 43-yard line with 8:48 remaining. The play was upheld after a challenge.

"You can't win football games when you lose the turnover battle like we did," Denver coach Mike Shanahan said.

Fargas then helped the Raiders (4-8) burn over five minutes off the clock by carrying six times for 24 yards. He scored the back-breaking touchdown from 5 yards out with 3:04 remaining to make it 34-20.

Oakland led, 17-7, in the third quarter after Cutler fumbled at the Denver 13. One play later, McCown hit Jerry Porter for a 13-yard touchdown with 10:55 left.

But the Broncos scored 13 unanswered points to pull within 24-20 on Travis Henry's second TD run with 11:21 remaining.

Henry carried 15 times for 49 yards in his first game back since partially tearing his PCL on November 4 in a loss to Detroit. He also is playing in appeal of a one-year suspension for violating the league's substance abuse policy for the third time.

"We have taken a lot of heat for our running defense and they showed up today and played extremely well against a team that was on fire," Kiffin said.

Cutler was 16-of-32 for 214 yards and two interceptions, the last of which sealed the outcome.