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 American Dream, the Franchise, the Seventh Wonder of the World, and the World’s Freshest Man, Raiderdamus the Great and Powerful. I come to you today elated, fresh off a correct prediction of a Raiders victory over the Patriots on the road last week. New Patriots coach Mike Vrabel said in 2020 that he’d cut off his own junk for another Super Bowl title, but at this point I think he’d cut off his frank and beans just to have a competent offensive line.
Having dispatched the hapless Patriots, the Raiders will return home to warm and sunny Las Vegas for a Monday Night tilt against a division rival. This game will be over at around 1:30 AM on the East Coast, and I’m sure all the people there will whine and bitch and moan about that, but it’s all the fault of East Coast residents for living there in the first place. Move west like an adult or shut up, loser. Your ancestors didn’t take a boat from the old country with a dream and six drachmas in a mason jar just so you could hole up in Philadelphia like a coward.
But I digress. Digression Jones over here. As is my long-held custom, I asked the Great Beyond for his views regarding the upcoming Monday Night game. Here is the message I received:
“You again! Ahh, it’s good to be right, isn’t it? So many people picked the Patriots to win, but they were mistaken. Drew Bledsoe wasn’t walking through that door. Tony Eason wasn’t walking through that door. Robert Edwards wasn’t going to hobble on crutches through that door. Tom Brady might have walked through that door, but he’d have been dressed up as Al Davis and would have told Josh McDaniels to shut up and go get him some coffee.
Anyway, who you got this week? The Chargers? I tried looking them up, but all I got were twenty search pages for USB-C cords. I guess the football Chargers are just as unimportant to Google as they are to the city they play in.
The medical community defines risky behavior as things like drinking, smoking, leading a sedentary lifestyle, having unprotected **x with multiple partners, and eating a poor diet. And while those are all dangerous, leading medical professionals say the riskiest behavior a person can have is playing offensive line for the Chargers, as it carries with it a 100% risk of catastrophic injury.
Last Thursday, the Chargers did a good thing for the first time in franchise history and took out the Chiefs in Brazil, winning 27-21. While this came as a shock to many fans in America, Brazil was used to seeing a team of once-proud champion footballers fade abruptly into irrelevance. The Chargers won that game due to Justin Herbert’s arm. While there have long been questions about Herbert’s consistency and clutch play, nobody has ever questioned his arm. From the moment he signed his Chargers contract, we could all see that his arm was strong enough to throw his entire career away.
Like many wannabe starlets of yore or anyone who wants to dance at the Pink Pony Club, the Chargers left the provincial climes of small-town America for the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles. And like many of those aspiring actresses before them, the Chargers were disappointed in what they found when they got there— a cold and unfriendly city with designs to exploit them and provide limited opportunities. Lacking funds to build their own stadium, Dean Spanos and co. were forced to first piggyback on a soccer team and then the Rams. These days they sit in the small brown chair in a hotel room as Stan Kroenke plows all the media rights deals in Southern California. San Diego, just like the knees of every Chargers player, knows what it feels like to have something important torn away from them.
If you define success as winning the championship, then the Chargers have existed for 66 years and have failed every single year. Their number of failures is equal to the number of times that Steve, the Charger fan, has been rejected on dating sites. It doesn’t matter if it’s eharmony, Match, Bumble, Tinder, Farmers Only, Grindr or Growler; neither the Chargers nor their fans get any hoes whatsoever. 66 years, no trophies, no bitches. Go sit in the chair and hold the camera, Dean.
I’m sure many of you noticed during the Brazil game that noted scam artist and moldy lunch meat salesman Mr. Beast claimed to have found the “biggest Charger fan” and trotted out the same short Asian lady with glasses we saw a few years ago when the Chargers choked a game away against Dallas. This lady is an online influencer and was paid to be there. The Chargers have so few genuine fans they had to pay an actual Vikings fan to pretend to like their team so they wouldn’t just look like the West Coast Jaguars. It was obvious from the beginning that she was an industry plant, as nobody would ever be genuinely excited to watch the Chargers play football.
Ultimately I think the Chargers will find their way in Los Angeles. A city built on a lack of authenticity, a lack of integrity, and an abundance of unwarranted hype will surely fall in love with a team that has won so many offseason championships in a row. By the time any Los Angeles resident figures out that the Chargers’ offseason moves mean about as much as USC’s recruiting star ratings, they will have moved to Texas or Montana or Oregon or Tennessee to escape California taxes and drive up real estate prices in their new area to make sure no local can ever afford a home.
On Monday night, the Chargers will do what they always do and play in front of a hostile crowd. Allegiant Stadium should be full of around 85% Raiders fans. This game will be a toss-up, but the good thing is that no matter who wins, the Chiefs will be in last place after the Eagles disembowel them on Sunday. If the Raiders can win, they’ll have a lot more believers than before, but I’m not confident that’s going to happen.
Chargers win, 29-24.
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