Raiderdamus disclaimer: The following is a work of humor and satire about the Las Vegas Raiders. Due to its content, nobody should read it because it might contain offensive language and imagery.
Greetings, Raider Nation! It is I, the proof in your pudding, the cent in your meter, and the silver lining in your playbook, Raiderdamus the Great and Powerful. Sadly, all things must come to an end, and this is one such time as we bid farewell to the Raiders and this season. This will be the last game of what we all knew would be a transitional year for the Silver and Black, who were wise enough to make sure they didn’t draft their quarterback of the future prior to this coming April. Michael Penix, come on down; you are the next contestant in “Pointless Raider Twitter Arguments.”
But before the Raiders’ season comes to a close, they have one final game against the team that Raider fans despise the most, just like all other teams. In keeping with ancient tradition, I have asked the Great Beyond for his thoughts on the game, and here is the message I received:
“Denver really knows how to pick its coaches. While the Raiders jettisoned Josh McDaniels as quickly as Denver did previously, the Raiders lucked into finding an interim coach the players and fans love. The Broncos went from one hated coach, Nate Hackett, to another hated coach, Sean Payton. On a likeability scale from 1 to 10, Payton ranks right below Matt Patricia and Pol Pot and right above Amber Heard.
For many people, it would be a dream to have a famous actor play them in a movie about their lives. Who would play you? Tom Cruise? Tom Hardy? Danny Trejo? Someone is cool, I’m sure. But for Sean Payton, the answer to the question of who would play him in a movie was Paul Blart, Mall Cop.
Luckily, fewer people saw that movie, called “Home Team,” than the number of people who go to Chargers games, so Payton was spared the indignity of that disasterpiece being in the cultural zeitgeist. That movie is Now Streaming, which is the 2024 code for Straight to DVD. The movie is called Home Team because Peyton Manning forgot which team he played for and made sure the Saints won.
Sean Payton is a d*ckless little hobgoblin who helped end the careers of Brett Favre and Kurt Warner by throwing the long-term mental health of his defensive players at them until they retired. Payton and Gregg Williams’ Bountygate scheme is a black eye in the sport because they used it on old bastards like Favre and not on truly annoying players like Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady.
Payton is ruining Russell Wilson’s career currently, but instead of Payton using a bounty system, he is using his own personality.
Sean Payton is benching Russell Wilson as punishment for signing a contract extension before he was hired. Payton expects his quarterbacks to have an iron grasp of his offensive system, which Wilson never displayed. Raider fans know how troublesome it can be when a coach has a “my way or the highway” attitude. Payton’s lone Super Bowl ring gave him plenty of rope to hang himself with, just like Josh McDaniels’ rings as a coordinator did for him. If you have that kind of attitude, you had better win.
Nobody cares about your system if you’re an *sshole who can’t win games. Sean Payton hasn’t won d*ck in over a decade, having led the Saints to one crushing loss after another in recent years. Sooner than later, he will be cast into the dustbin of history where he belongs, alongside the Vance Josephs and Rich Kotites and Adam Gases and Mike Nolans of the world. Sean Payton is the Bobby Valentine of football.
It’s a shame for Russ Wilson to go out this way, because he’s the greatest quarterback ever to be made fun of by a starfish on national television. But the Broncos are owned by Wal-Mart, and anyone who has ever worked for Wal-Mart knows the soulless and ignoble way they handle employee relations.
Wilson, like Carl the retiree greeter at your local Wal-Mart, is just a cog in the great machine, whose blood and tears must be used to feed the tree of capitalism, so Wal-Mart can import more goods from Chinese factories and slap “Made in the USA” stickers on them and sell them to people who want to look patriotic.
Russell Wilson, who is from North Carolina State and Wisconsin and Seattle and Denver but not really from any of those places, may as well have been “Made in China” for all the genuine personality and humanity he’s ever displayed.
Denver teams of old, ones coached by Mike Shanahan, would cut block and chop opposing teams to death and run them over with some sixth-round running back nobody had ever heard of before he put up 250 yards on some schlub team on Monday Night Football. They had a personality, because “b*tch *ss cheater” counts as a personality.
Sean Payton’s Broncos are the lifeless husk of a football team who rely mostly on luck and expect other teams to bend over for them because of the Sean Payton system they run. Well, if it didn’t work for prime Drew Brees, it’s not going to work for them now with Jarrett “Low Stakes” Stidham at the helm.
The Broncos have not beaten the Raiders since the Taft Administration and will not do so this week either.
Raiders win, 23-20.
*Top Photo: Ron Chenoy, USA TODAY Sports