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 man who floats like gravity, never had a cavity, got more lines than a Wayans got family, Raiderdamus the Great and Powerful. I come to you today vindicated, having been accurate in a prediction of a Raiders home loss to the Chargers. While I take no pleasure in the Silver and Black losing, it’s easy to see this squad is on some Jeff Fisher 7-9 bullshit this year and so tempering our expectations is both easy and necessary. Our goal should be beating the Chiefs, and luckily I think even Oklahoma State would be a 3-point home favorite over KC.
Fortunately for the Raiders, the Chargers are someone else’s problem this week and the Raiders have another challenge up ahead. As is my custom, I reached out to the Great Beyond for his opinion regarding this week’s game on the East Coast. Here is the message I received:
“It’s crazy how the arm that beat the Chiefs was Justin Herbert’s, and yet the arm that beat the Raiders was Geno Smith’s. I haven’t seen that many interceptions since Iran launched missiles into Qatar. No quarterback has been that embarrassing since the last time some braindead coach decided to believe in Nathan Peterman.
So who you got this week? The Commanders? Is that still their name? The first time Washington changed their name was in 1933, when they went from being the Boston Braves to being the Boston Red-Skinned Potatoes and then the Washington Red-Skinned Potatoes in 1937. And so they remained until the owner of Fedex decided he liked Russet potatoes better in 2020, and the team changed its name to Washington Football Team, which is a very generous description of what the team was doing at the time. Commanders is a much better name for the team, because they should not be associated anymore with proud Native Americans like Osceola, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo. Those guys actually won battles against cowboys.
Washington Football Team is a name only a highly-paid marketing professional could come up with, and it combined the creativity of naming a hockey team the Utah Hockey Club with the whimsy of naming your WWE2K create-a-wrestler “Player1”. And your new Intercontinental champion, Player1. Only a team led at the time by Dan Snyder would actually do this, as his two children are named “Boy” and “Girl” because he can’t be bothered to remember anyone’s name, especially all those cheerleaders he pimped out in Central America.
Fortunately the Commanders no longer have Snyder weighing them down and instead are owned by Josh Harris (who is a billionaire but not an irredeemable shitheel like Dan Snyder), a man responsible for leading the Philadelphia 76ers through their “Process” years, taking them from a middle of the pack Eastern Conference team to being the worst team in basketball. The Sixers are the only team in the NBA that can make the Mavericks look smart. I can imagine what the initial boardroom meetings to come up with The Process went something like this:
Underling: Mr. Harris, what should we do to improve the team?
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Harris: Lose games.
U: And then what?
H: Draft good players.
U: Got it. Then what?
H: Lose more games.
U: Okay…
H: Then draft more good players.
U: When do we start winning, sir?
H: Winning?
The Commanders started their “Process” by drafting Heisman winning quarterback Jayden Daniels, and he promptly got to the “Winning” part which has thus far eluded the Sixers. However, what we have now in Washington is a team that thinks it’s hot s*** because they beat the Lions in the playoffs. If you cannot see the irony in what I just said, you’re too young to be reading this. Washington’s downfall has already begun with Daniels’ current injury, and he will soon go to the Island of Misfit Washington QBs Who Hurt Their Leg. There he will join Joe Theismann, Heath Shuler, Robert Griffin III, Alex Smith, Donovan McNabb and Jason Campbell. The Commanders will soon be on their “Lose games” part of the Process again.
Washington has been a graveyard for coaches ever since Joe Gibbs retired, and instead of holding on to their own prized assistants like Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, Mike McDaniel, Matt LaFleur and Kevin O’Connell, they hired dweebs like Jim Zorn, Mike Shanahan, Jay Gruden and Bill Callahan. And now they’ve hired two defensive-minded head coaches in a row in Ron Rivera and Dan Quinn. Anyone who thinks those guys are the future did not watch the NFC South from 2015 to 2020. Hiring Rivera and Quinn is like dating a girl with daddy issues. You know damn well it’s not going to work out, because if it had ever worked out with anyone before, they wouldn’t be here with you. But it will be fun for a while. Quinn at least has the good fortune of having Kliff Kingsbury on staff, and so Quinn’s influence on the offense is mitigated by the fact that Kingsbury actually kinda knows what he’s doing.
This week, the Commanders will have the ignominity of starting QB Marcus Mariota. The Mariota Experience is sort of like the Geno Smith one, where you watch him and think about how good he is right up until he throws the ball to the other team with a pass any middle school quarterback would know better than to let fly. Mariota’s best asset was always his running ability, but in the NFL they don’t let you do that because NFL teams are paying their QBs too damn much money to just let them take a Terry Tate Office Linebacker spear to the kidney. However awful Mariota’s attempts at being a pocket passer are on Sunday, they will be far less embarrassing than any of the Commanders’ recent attempts to honor the memory of Sean Taylor.
Raiders win, 20-19.
*Top Photo: Getty Images