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 lyrical miracle, the essential intellectual, the man who goes harder than the tree that killed Sonny Bono, Raiderdamus the Great and Powerful. I come to you today despondent off the heels of another Raiders loss, and I know that forgetting football exists would be best for my mental health and all of yours as well. But the fact is that if I cared about myself or my well-being at all, I wouldn’t be a Raiders fan, and so here I am, battered and bruised, claiming I didn’t hear no bell. Win, lose, or tie, the Raiders will hurt me till I die.
Up next in the rogue’s gallery of Raiders opponents this year is one of our many ancient enemies, who have plagued us since time immemorial and whose fans will almost certainly infest our stadium with their vile presence like roaches infesting whichever side of the duplex wasn’t fumigated. In keeping with tradition, I have asked the Great Beyond for his thoughts regarding Sunday’s game.
“Last week, Bo Nix finally realized that the Washington Huskies are not in the NFL, and he turned into a competent quarterback because he’s not playing them and never will again. Gardner Minshew, conversely, remembered that he’s Gardner Minshew and Mike Leach is dead, so he’ll never be a good starting quarterback ever again. In the absence of Davante Adams, Minshew found a new favorite target in Patrick Surtain II, who, in what must have come as a shock to Minshew himself, plays for Denver.
But who you got this week? Pittsburgh? Well, there’s nothing I can say here that will hurt them any more than having Matt Canada as their OC for three hundred and sixteen years, but since Steeler fans are such degenerate scumbags, I will endeavor to hurt their feelings as much as possible.
Much like the Broncos are where Colts quarterbacks go to die, Pittsburgh is where Bears quarterbacks go to get paid when it’s clear they aren’t any good. The Steelers made a splash this offseason by signing Justin Fields, remembering how well the Mitchell Trubisky experiment went. The results have been predictable, as the Steelers offense has been as unwatchable as a home video of a guy sticking his unmentionables into a vacuum cleaner or a Nickelback concert DVD.
The reason for this is that Steelers head coach Omar Epps, despite being one of the best head coaches in the NFL, has been saddled by the Steelers’ cheapskate head*ss ownership with some of the worst assistant coaches of all time. Matt Canada performed as well as offensive coordinator as the actual Canada would perform in a war against the United States. Current OC Arthur Smith is fresh off burning Atlanta to ashes in his own personal vendetta against Bijan Robinson.
I’d ask how Arthur Smith keeps getting jobs in football, but then I remember that Henry Kissinger served as a foreign policy decision maker in several presidential administrations despite being one of the most evil human beings to ever walk the face of the Earth. Inertia is a hell of a drug.
The Steelers have survived so far this season in spite of Fields’ ineptitude. They survived the likes of Trubisky and Duck Hodges and Mason Rudolph. They drafted Kenny Pickett, not because he was any good, but because they passed on former Pitt QB Dan Marino in 1982 and lived to regret it. If the Steelers wanted to draft someone named after a fence, they could have taken Keith Chainlink or Steve Barbwire in the sixth round. The Steelers’ QB situation has been so bad lately that their fans yearn for the halcyon days of Bubby Brister, Tommy Maddox, Mike Tomczak, and Neil O’Donnell.
Football fans often look at an unsuccessful play on the field and say, “I could have done that.” The fans are right this time, because the Steelers’ offensive line has been awful and the average female Steelers fan outweighs each and every player on that line. Could Marge from Altoona get in front of Myles Garrett long enough to let Fields deliver a strike downfield? You bet she could. She didn’t take those self-defense classes at the mall for nothing.
Steelers fans and Cowboys fans are unquestionably the worst in the NFL. Both fanbases are full of self-important whining crybaby *sshats who take success for granted and criticize everything. Neither team will change anything about their organization even in the face of catastrophic failure. However, the difference is that the Cowboys choke when the stakes are highest, and the Steelers choke when the stakes are lowest. A 6-0 Steelers team should under no circumstances be favored over a 1-5 Jaguars team—Pittsburgh loses that every time. Whereas Dallas will go 13-4 and lose in the Divisional Round to another team that won’t beat the Chiefs.
The Raiders long ago chose as their color scheme silver and black, the two coolest colors in all the visible light spectrum, and it has served them well. The Steelers chose black and yellow, and their fans swing around yellow towels, which comforts them because it reminds them of how their mattress looked until they were 14. These towels are convenient for your typical Steeler fan who is too drunk and fat to get out of his or her seat at Acupuncture Stadium. They can just go right then and there, and nobody will be the wiser, because the whole place smells like that. And by place, I mean Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh is a place where good ideas, like properly cooking your steaks, go to die. The Steelers are no different. The organization as a whole is so stubborn and resistant to change that they adopt new schematic concepts many years after the NFL has figured them out. Soon enough, the Steelers will run the Wing-T and may adopt the forward pass as a means of attack.
This week, however, the 15% of the crowd that will be Raider fans may be in for disappointment. The Steelers offense is a dumpster fire, but their defense is good enough to score all the points they may need. Aidan O’Connell will be sacked at least twice by TJ Watt, who is in the midst of having his career wasted just like his brother’s was by the Texans.
Steelers win, 23-13.
*Top Photo: Getty Images
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