When a franchise’s legacy for decades is based on loser head coaches, loser ownership, loser off field behavior, and losing games, the only thing it has left is performative fake tough-guy nonsense.
The Oakland/Los Angeles/Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders are all show, no go. There are no redeemable qualities to this franchise, built entirely on a self-ascribed renegade status that was capsulized and buried in the 70s.
The Raiders are the bully in middle school that was blessed with early development. Kissed by circumstance and a small competition pool, the Raiders dominated a league of 8 teams and got a reputation of beating up on opponents the same way a fat alcoholic baseball player did in the 1920s.
When the bully went to high school and the leagues consolidated, all the Raiders had left to hold onto their pride was a pouty owner and adolescent temper tantrums. No longer the big kid in school, they had nothing left but to push the lines of what was acceptable, knowing they no longer had a genetic advantage of talent to fall back on.
Now that the league has expanded multiple times, and the NFL’s brightest star enrolled at their school, they have nothing left.
The bully went away to college and drifted into oblivion. You and your circle of college friends have moved on, and the memory of the Raiders only exists in spun tales at parties, and the occasional Facebook memory that pops into your timeline. Nary a thought of the Raiders passes through anyone’s mind, as their relevance has long since passed its usefulness.
Which is why the Raiders, in all their decayed bluster, have to resolve to amateur stunts as a way of motivating themselves to gain attention because their play on the field certainly doesn’t warrant it:
Fitting the Raiders would dance on the logo of an opponent that’s spent consecutive generations kicking their ass, as the NFL has been dancing on the graves of the Raiders franchise for just as long, as a forgotten relic from the past. No jumping, no dancing, no hype session, no Haka, could have saved the Raiders for what would happen next after pulling this stunt.
The Chiefs pumped the Raiders yesterday like a $2 broke-ass Mark Davis pumped the Nevada tax payers into constructing a stadium for the extreme pleasure of watching his embarrassment of a football team get 40-burgered twice in the same season by its biggest rival.
This sad joke of a franchise has nothing left to be proud of, which is why they kicked a 26-yard field goal to end the first half down 35-0. Their delicate little egos went from starting a fire pre-game, to watching their marshmallow feebly fall off the stick during the S’mores making.
If the AFC West were a kingdom, Patrick Mahomes would rule it. The Raiders filled their britches in Arrowhead last year and thought they were ready to come at the King again despite all evidence to the contrary. The game was over as soon as it begun and the King’s reign continued at the expense of a franchise that just doesn’t matter anymore.
48-9 on Sunday and 41-14 in Week 10. The Chiefs have a 66-point margin of victory against the Raiders this season, but the Raiders will always have their pregame photo op to remember 2021.
Just whine, baby. It’s all you have left.