Happy homecoming for Raiders' Regan Upshaw.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

ALAMEDA, Calif. _ What's the secret to Regan Upshaw's resurgence with the Raiders this season? Remote control cars.

When Upshaw signed with Oakland in March, he came home. His homecoming allowed him to get into a comfort zone he hadn't experienced in his first four years in the NFL with Tampa Bay and Jacksonville. That comfort made football fun again for the Pittsburg High School and Cal product. And for Upshaw, fun equals success.

"Any 9-to-5 job, people normally have their family and friends around," Upshaw said. "Now I have that off-the-field connection. In the NFL, a lot of times you're way away from home and everybody wants to be your friend and they don't know you from Jack. Here, I'm just hanging out with people who love me and trust me."

Which brings us back to the remote control cars. Upshaw's return to the Bay Area has allowed him to strengthen friendships that date back to high school. That enables him to do the things that interest him_things he might not otherwise do.

"It's nice to just be able to do the things you like to do," he said. "If I want to go play with some remote control cars, all my friends do that. I'm not a weirdo, I'm just doing the things I like to do. You'd be doing them by yourself otherwise. Coming home, you get to do the stuff you like to do."

Upshaw probably would have been a happy man no matter how the Raiders fared this season. But the experience has been even better because he helped the team to the AFC West title. The Raiders host the Miami Dolphins on Saturday in the AFC divisional playoffs.

Upshaw, 25, says his return home has allowed him to simply be himself, and that has translated into a recharged career. After three successful seasons with the Buccaneers, he had a lost season in 1999. He appeared in just one of Tampa Bay's first five games before being traded to the Jaguars. At Jacksonville, he spent the remainder of the season as a reserve, seeing action mostly on ...