The great thing about the first-year coach of the Oakland Raiders, Bill (Hey, I Was Only Gruden's Assistant At The Time) Callahan, is how utterly right -- and completely wrong -- the man can be in the same instant on the subject of the Tuck Game.

	The Patriots and the Raiders, both in need of a victory with their 5-4 records, can ill afford to drop the ball when they meet again on Sunday.

Intellectually, of course, spot on.

And emotionally? Just as wrong as dead-solid wrong can get.

Callahan, a person currently preoccupied with just about everything but the Tuck Rule, entered the Wishful Thinking Hall of Fame this week when he strongly suggested that his players not revisit the subject of Jan. 19, 2002. No public rehashes of that playoff game against the Patriots, the game that many believe propelled the Pats to their Super Bowl championship. No reflective moments over the Tom Brady-Charles Woodson square dance and barn raising, the Foxboro Stadium finale -- "The Snow Job," in the parlance of the guys and gals over at We Got Screwed Oakland Local No. 491.

"I'm not going to put words in our players' mouths," Callahan told reporters a day after his Raiders pounded Denver and five days before they were to host the Pats on Sunday night (ESPN, 8:30 ET) this week. "They've all gone through the emotional gamut of the offseason, and they understand what transpired.

"I indicated that in training camp: There's closure and we want to move on. We certainly have ... We want to leave last year's game in the past. I respect the jobs you (reporters) have to do, but I am going to tell our players that I want to keep this focus on the task at hand."

Permit us a brief aside: That would be the same "moving-on" training camp in which a host of Raiders walked out of a rules orientation meeting held by referee Mike Carey, ostensibly in continued protest of Walt Coleman's interpretation of Brady's tuck-and-drop some six months earlier.

Keep moving, folks! Nothing to see here. Closure complete.

You can see where Callahan is going with this, and as laudable a goal as it is, the man simply has no shot. As a coach, he is obligated to keep the train on the tracks and his players' minds on beating the Patriots this Sunday -- and with perfectly good reason. It is a game that matters on every level imaginable for both the 5-4 Raiders and Patriots; somebody is going to lose at the Coliseum, and in doing so that team is going to deal itself a blow in its respective divisional race.

But if ever there was a time for the Raiders to engage their historic grudge mentality, this is it. If ever there was a game to be played on emotion at least as much as analytical acumen, this is the one. If ever there was a franchise that could take two worn ticket stubs and work them into a conspiracy theory, much less a crucial referee's decision on a breezy, snowy New England playoff night, it is the one with the eyepatch in its logo and legal briefs in its hand.

And if ever a rule spun two teams in such opposite single-season distances, we'd love to know about it -- if only to give the bleeding Raider Nation someone else's problems to kick around for a while.

It is all unknown beyond what actually happened, but the Oakland coulda-shoulda-woulda version, sanitized and de-loused for your protection, goes roughly as follows: If Woodson's hit is a sack and a fumble, the Raiders win in regulation in Foxboro last January, eventually advance to the Super Bowl and like their chances against St. Louis. Jon Gruden and Al Davis thus cannot possibly divorce -- not like, say, Peter Magowan and Dusty Baker -- and so the nucleus of the modern Oakland success remains intact into this season, in which case the Raiders might be something closer to 7-2 at this point and already sizing up playoff opponents.

It's a long way from there to here, of course, especially considering that Oakland is old as dirt at several key positions and suffering from significant injury at others. That is both the beauty and the danger of bringing last season's Foxboro finish into play now -- it's such a big, fat target that it practically obscures the things happening just this minute, including the part about desperately needing another home win.

And all of this is to say nothing of the Patriots, 5-4 in their own right, playing better but by no means looking yet like a threat to repeat, and coming into a hostile Coliseum in an effort to pick off a third straight road victory. New England's fullback, Marc Edwards, spoke just the other day of the inherent risk to any football player of spending much time in the past. Generally speaking, you wind up getting your head handed to you in the present.

Interesting, this question of where the energy is properly directed. Callahan has it right in the most technical sense available: He sees a dangerous opponent in a spotlight game, and an opportunity to build upon one of Oakland's finest all-around performances (against the Broncos) in years, and the man doesn't want to blow it. His job, after all, is with the 2002 Raiders.

And credit Callahan with ye good olde optimistic try, but no dice. No, this is a memory that ought to be carried into Sunday night on both sides -- not merely because it is such a rich and recent one, but because football without grudges just doesn't work.

That is to say: Give us your demonized, your conspiracy-theorized, your championship-denied. Give us your Gruden-less and your Brady-full. Throw in a dash of Walt Coleman, if only for the hell of it, and get everybody's keister onto the football field as soon as time will allow. It's a night game, after all. The more ghosts the better.

Mark Kreidler is a columnist with the Sacramento Bee and a regular contributor to ESPN.com