Raiderdamus disclaimer: The following is a work of humor and satire about the Las Vegas Raiders. It may contain offensive language and imagery, and due to its content, it should not be read by anyone.
Greetings, Raider Nation! It is I, the pontiff of prognostication, the father of foresight, the sultan of seers, and the World’s Freshest Man, Raiderdamus the Great and Powerful. It has been a long week of reflection in my hermit cave, reflecting on the Raiders’ pathetic loss to the Chargers in Week 1. We should have seen it coming. During training camp, all the Raiders reporters told us the team had an elite defense and an offense that did not know its a** from a hole in the ground. And they showed up in Los Angeles and displayed just that, and we all had Shocked Pikachu Face. How could the Raiders be exactly what we knew they were? It boggles the mind.
However, this week is a new week and another opportunity for the Raiders to be awful in new and exciting ways. In keeping with tradition, I’ve asked the Great Beyond for his thoughts about Sunday’s game. Here is the message I received:
“You’re back again! It takes determination to keep going with all this. The Raiders have crushed more spirits than Britt Reid on a week-long margarita bender. The way this season is going, the only thing fans of the silver and black will be raiding is their local therapist’s office.
But who you got this week? Baltimore? A fact that almost nobody cares about is that the Ravens are named after the most famous poem by Baltimore native Edgar Allan Poe. The football team usually meets their end the same way Poe did—losing their minds, acting erratically, and dying suddenly after having engaged in fraud.
Most TV shows about police are based in large cities like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. But when David Simon wrote The Wire, possibly the best TV show ever, he knew he had to base it in the most crime-infested, drug-riddled, murderous, and dangerous city in the country. So he set the show in Baltimore. The reason the Orioles logo is holding a bat is because he’s about to beat you up and steal your car to sell it for scrap and buy crack.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed in Baltimore in March, but that wasn’t even the biggest collapse the city saw in 2024. Lamar Jackson tried to show everyone how well he could throw but only proved that he’s great at throwing his chances of ever winning a Super Bowl into the toilet. It’s great that Lamar opened the season in Kansas City because he’s never going to see a banner-raising ceremony again.
It should have come as no surprise that the bridge collapsed. After all, neglecting vital infrastructure is why the Colts left Baltimore in the first place. If only the Ravens knew somebody who was really into quality steel, or perhaps was from a city that produced a lot of it. The loss of the bridge hasn’t stopped Baltimore from being one of the most traffic-congested cities in the country. After all, the only thing that can stop Baltimore is the playoffs. The Ravens couldn’t be bigger chokers if they ate a Popeye’s biscuit with no water.
The Ravens usually have a very sound draft strategy of staying put and taking whichever future Hall of Famer the other teams pass on. Other teams may call and try to trade up, but the Ravens never get those calls because Baltimore has no receivers.
The Ravens this offseason acquired Derrick Henry, who was clearly tired of wasting his career in Tennessee and decided instead to tear his ACL for Baltimore and hope they win the Super Bowl with him on the IR so he can get a ring. The only people getting a ring in Nashville are all the Bridezillas who bar-hop for their bachelorette parties there, so long as their exploits don’t end up plastered on Instagram.
Later this season, when the Ravens have coasted their way to a division title and lost in the Divisional Round yet again, we can have Scoob and Shaggy take off their masks and realize they were the Browns the whole time. No matter how many Super Bowls the Ravens win by either murdering Rich Gannon or beating the Niners, they will always have that Browns stink on them, and no amount of Old Bay seasoning will get rid of that.
For all the money they’re paying Lamar Jackson, they could have just signed Tyrod Taylor on the cheap or brought back Tony Banks from whatever Red Robin he’s managing and gotten the same results. With all the savings, they could buy so much cocaine that Marion Barry would come back from the dead and run for Mayor of Baltimore.
As much as the Raiders need a win in this game, it’s an early game on the East Coast, and the Raiders never win those. Las Vegas will try to stifle the Ravens offense, but that’s not very likely.
Ravens win, 37-12.
*Top Photo: Getty Images