Kenny Stabler

1975 Kenny Stabler had a hard time because as the rest of the World span around him, he was stuck being 1975 Kenny Stabler. Even natural Kenny Stabler grew and changed and became a living breathing Kenny Rogers DUI poster, and all the World was 1986 and then 1992 and then 1999 and then some 2003 and 4 and now 2013, but 1975 Kenny Stabler was still just 1975 Kenny Stabler, being awesome sure, but how awesome is awesome if there's not the right stuff to be awesome with? 1975 Kenny Stabler was lacking in love he realized.

He often 1975 walked around the various streets at night and during days, and would predator drone in on women from the mental perspective to see if they might be his love. None ever were, and a couple even ordered restraint by him legal-wise aka playing lawyerball. But then one day 1975 Kenny Stabler saw the girl, well first he saw her ass and it was glorious like it was made of pure solid gold but the gold was melted by the Sun itself and then the molten gold was poured into the black yoga stretch pants before 1975 Kenny Stabler's very eyes, solidifying into something so solid and beautiful that 1975 Kenny Stabler followed it for three blocks out of his way before realizing what had even transpired. The solid gold ass was attached to a well-rounded individual of a woman, almost Renaissance-istic maybe even, and the woman went into a tea house, because where 1975 Kenny Stabler was at the people drank tea not coffee, as he enjoyed the comforts of foreign lands like completely foreign because he felt so foreign in his own lands being a 1975 man in different yeared world, even though they spake the same language, so he figured it easier after time to just go full-on foreign where his 1975 ways would not seem so unnatural.

The woman ordered a funny worded tea and 1975 Kenny Stabler slid right up beside her as she pulled out her satchel of rubiks and he said in mental telepathy while looking into her soul eyes, "I'll pay for this." A little part of the solid gold in the front parts of her dungarees started to melt, and they became a thing on that higher plain immediately, like a log cabin made of psychic love, and started to chink the logs with mud conversation to get to know each other.

Her name was NDAA, and she was a paralegal security consultant for the Globochem company from Mr. Show. Her schooling was made of AR-15s and Bushmaster 223s, but her heart was made of four-leaf clovers and buttercuppy meadows. 1975 Kenny Stabler said, "NDAA, I know some sort of metaphor could be made by our words inside this robot machine network, but I don't care about that. All I know is you make me feel in a way I have not felt since the actual 1975 I was born from. Let's not let this writing make any veiled points about anything geopolitical or cultural or really anything. Let's just run away together."

NDAA smiled at 1975 Kenny Stabler, and then they ran away, and I couldn't see what happened for the rest of the story.

Chuck Bresnahan, Enormous Jackass

Let me say this right off the bat: I have NEVER, EVER been a fan of Choke Bresnahan and his horrible defensive scheme. He was horrible in his first stint as the Raiders defensive coordinator, and even worse in his second go around. His insistence on using a 4 man pass rush and sticking his corners in man coverage made him a favorite of Al Davis, despite the fact that his preferred scheme hasn't won jack shit in the NFL in the last decade. He likes to "think outside of the box" by doing such bold things as asking his linebackers to cover wide receivers. As you can imagine, these sort of things nearly always end up with said receiver standing in the endzone with the ref raising both of his arms in the air. His corners routinely play 10-15 yards off of the line of scrimmage, even on 3rd and short, resulting the opposition being able to put together long drive after long drive.  Rather than working a scheme that suits his players skills and limitations, Chunk repeatedly tries to shove the square peg into round holes. Aaron Curry is a good athlete who can make plays against the run but is awful in pass coverage. Guess who the dip shit D coordinator has covering tight ends or receivers? Mike Mitchell is terrible in pass coverage, so guess who repeatedly got raped by a gimpy Antonio Gates on Sunday? Kameron Wimbley is strictly a pass rushing linebacker. Guess who was constantly getting burned in coverage? This shit went on all season, and despite the fact that it was OBVIOUS that his crackpot scheme wasn't working, Chuck stood firm. Chuck Bresnahan, you are the reason the Raiders are sitting at home right now. Your bullshit prevent defense lost the game in Buffalo. Your reluctance to step on the Lions throat helped Matt Stafford bend your defense over and cornhole them in front of your own fans with less than 2 minutes left, ruining Thanksgiving in the process. Either of these games would have put the Raiders in the playoffs.

I am not a vindictive man, but I hope Chuck Bresnahan never works in the NFL again. This was a season dedicated to the memory of Al Davis, and rather than honor that memory, Chuck Bresnahan dropped his pants and squeezed out a 2' coil of shit on his grave. Happy New Year, Chuck. Might want to brush up on your interview skills. You're going to need them.

Drunk Daddy is Back

Football fandom is supposed to be fun. It's meant to distract us from our miserable lives, not reinforce the worst qualities of them. It's supposed be something light hearted, not a soul killing experience. Football is supposed to supplement our enjoyment, not an emotional burden. And yet that is exactly what football has become for me. You see, it's the Holiday Season, and Raider Fan's alcoholic dad just fell off the wagon. Now some of you reading this are probably saying to yourselves "How dare this clown make fun of a real issue like alcoholism! My father is an alcoholic!". I'm not mocking alcoholism. Far from it. My dad is a recovering alcoholic, so I've been down that road. Here's the thing: I'm drawing an illustration using an extreme like alcoholism to prove a point, and you're going to have to deal with it. So do us all a solid and turn in your outrage badge for a few minutes and revel in my malaise. Or don't. I don't care.

I've made the comparison of being Raiders fan to having a drunk for a father before, but for some reason I'm at a point now where it actually affects me more than it used to. It's almost as if I actually expected better. You know how it goes: things were good when you were little then one day dad gets laid off and loses it. Rather than deal with things like a man, Dad chooses to crawl into the bottle. Lies are told, promises are broken, words are said. Mom gets good at making excuses and soon is able to predict when Dad is about to blow. She sends you to bed and turns the volume up on the TV, but you can still hear her crying as Dad rambles on and on before passing out on the couch in a puddle of his own piss. The next morning he shows his shame and tells you that it won't happen again and that he loves you and Mom and he's going to change. You give him a hug but you know deep inside he's the same bitter prick and the next time he hits a bump in the road he's going to come unglued again. You know this, and you're 7 years old. Did I mention you're 7 in this scenario? Yeah, you're 7 and you already know Dad is seriously messed up. A week later the car breaks down and Dad downs a bottle of Kessler and takes a bat to the car. Mom grabs you and you head off to Grandma's house for an indefinite stay.

Weeks go by and there's no sign of Dad until he shows up on Grandma's front lawn at 2 in the morning, screaming at Mom before hopping into his car, backing over the mailbox and fishtailing out of sight. At this point you know Dad is beyond repair. He can't change. He won't change. Mom knows this too, so she hires a lawyer. You sit in his office and tell this total stranger who Mom says is cool all the crazy shit your dad has pulled. The lawyer calmly writes it all down and says some things you don't understand to Mom and you go back to Grandma's house. A couple days later Dad is on the front lawn again, but it's different. The car is properly parked. He's not jumping up and down. In fact, he's on his knees. He's not screaming. He's speaking to Mom with kindness in his words. There's tears in his eyes. Her eyes, too. Mom wipes the tears away and smiles as she tells you to go inside and back your bags because we're going home. Things are going to be normal again. Well, normal for us, at any rate.

On the way home Dad tells you about how much he missed you and how hard he's working to change. He's got a new job working at the plant. He's going to meetings. He's going to church. Everything is going to be better. Except it's not, and you know this, but you play along anyway. Man, you are pretty damned cynical for a 7 year old. For the first few weeks it looks like maybe Dad really did turn the corner, but inevitably the cracks start to show. You start to notice unusual quantities of mouthwash in the house. Dad starts missing a few days of work. Sometimes he comes home really late. Mom doesn't want to believe the collapse is coming, but she knows it is. Still, she put on the brave face because Christmas is coming and she's having the family over to show just how far dad has come in his recovery. Christmas Day arrives and Dad says he got called in to work some overtime. You know his plant is closed on Christmas. Mom knows the plant is closed on Christmas. She knows the collapse is at hand, but she packs a lunch for his fictional overtime anyway and kisses him as he walks out the door and reminds him that dinner is at 5. Your entire family shows up for dinner. 5 o'clock comes around without Dad. Then 6 o'clock. At a quarter to 7 Grandpa says "to hell with it" and starts to carve the bird just as the door flies open and in walks Dad. The REAL Dad. Drunk Dad. Even from 15 feet away you catch a whiff of his trademark scent, Kessler, and you sit back and get ready to enjoy the show. For a 7 year old you sure have a demented sense of humor. Dad starts yelling and screaming as mom hands him a plate of food that he promptly throws at the wall before punching out Grandpa, knocking over the Christmas tree and yet again passing out on the couch in a puddle ofhis own piss. Then you're back and Grandma's house where the whole idiotic cycle will start again.

This is what being a Raiders fan is all about. I can't give up because you never give up on Dad, but we're 2 losses away from spending the rest of the winter at Grandma's house until Dad shows up on the front lawn towards the end of summer and Mom takes him back again. And so on and so forth.

In which I fall in love with Carson Palmer

Carson, babe, I know I MAY have insinuated you might be a douche bag in a previous post, but I didn't mean it. In fact, since that day I've gone out of my way to make excuses for your mistakes. Like, at least 4 or 5 of your INTs have been a result of timing/familiarity issues and not from bad reads or bad throws. It's not your fault that the defense decided to let Timmy and Tebowettes walk all over them in the 2nd half last week. It's not your fault that Darren McFadden is carved from balsa wood. You are clearly better at throwing the football than Jason Campbell is and ever will be. The team is starting to get used to you, and you to them. Things are starting to come together. I understand why you're in my life now. I'm not afraid anymore! Look, Carson, what I'm trying to say is that I... I'm in love with you.

Let it sink in...

OK, there, I said it. You are everything I've ever wanted in a Raiders QB. You have a rocket arm. You complete passes. You have a chip on your shoulder. You're everything I've been looking for since the day Jim Plunkett walked out of my life. You're everything Jamucus Russell was supposed to be. You're the quarterback I wanted. You're the quarterback I needed. I went through the motions with Campbell, pretending to be happy, but the spark was never there. I was just happy he wasn't Jamucus. Aaron Brooks, Kerry Collins, Rich Gannon, Jeff George, Jeff Hostetler, Jay Schroeder, Donald Hollas, Todd Marinovich, Andrew Walter, Josh McCown, they all broke my heart. I wanted to love them, but they just never loved me. You, you're different. You make me want to be a better fan. You make me believe in the passing game again. I never thought the vertical game could feel like this again. I had forgotten how great it feels to know that your QB is going to put the ball where his receiver has a chance to catch it literally every time it leaves his hand. You have restored my faith in the forward pass, and for that I will always love you.

I don't know what the future holds, but I have no fear so long as you are my gunslinger. Thank you Carson Palmer for showing me that it's OK to let love open the door to my heart.

Al Davis Goes to Valhalla

"In football, I root for the Oakland Raiders because they hire castoffs, outlaws, malcontents, and fuck-ups, they have lots of penalties, fights, and paybacks, and because Al Davis told the rest of the pig NFL owners to go get fucked... Someday, the Raiders will be strong again, and they will dip the ball in shit and shove it down the throats of the wholesome, white, heartland teams that pray together and don't deliver late hits." -George Carlin

PROLOGUE

I have often thought of this day and what my reaction would be. There were even times where I hoped this day would come sooner rather than later. Now the day is upon us and I am not entirely sure how I should feel. Allen Davis, the maverick owner of the Oakland Raiders, has passed away at the age of 82. Death has a way of making a deity out of absolute assholes (see: Steve Jobs) and I have repeatedly used this blog to voice my displeasure against Al and the trail of bad decisions he has made over the last decade, so I will do my best to not turn this post into a wankfest for him. I will try to keep this even keeled, and to keep from becoming an Al Davis apologist.

ALLEN "AL" DAVIS

JULY 4th, 1929- OCTOBER 8th 2011

Al Davis is the reason the NFL is the money making machine it is today. Not "a reason". Not "a contributing factor". He is THE reason. When other owners were content to sit around and count their money, Al was on the field evaluating talent. When other owners were sitting on their yachts, Al was in the film room with his coaches. When other owners were willing to accept what the commissioner was going to give them, Al demanded more. He sued the NFL often. Sometimes he won. Other times he lost, but the fact that he had the balls to do it empowered other owners. Al's lawsuits were the first dominoes in the chain of events that lead to teams being able to slap the logo of the company of their choice on their jerseys, opening the flood gates for teams to sign with the apparel maker who offered them the most money instead of the one the NFL commanded them to. Every time Jerry Jones looks up at his one billion inch HD TV hanging from the roof of his monument to his tiny penis, he should give a nod to Al. Every time Dan Snyder signs a free agent to a laughable contract, he should pay his propers to Al, who was doing it before it was cool. Al's swashbuckling ways made being an NFL owner profitable. Profitability attracted billionaire prospective owners. And the league grew by leaps and bounds into the juggernaut that it is today.

Al Davis was a classic contrarian. When the NFL was a white faced, buttoned down operation, he was the first to hire Latino and black head coaches and draft black QBs. When NFL playbooks consisted mainly of power running plays, Al's teams threw the ball. When owners wanted their players to be squeeky clean Stepford Wives in pads, Al hired miscreants. All other NFL owners would have been terrified to see Eazy E, Ice Cube and Dre wearing their gear while rapping about murder and hoes. Al Davis actually PROVIDED THEM with hats and jackets. For decades this rebellious, counter culture intuition served the Raiders well, as they won 3 Super Bowls. Catchphrases like "Commitment to Excellence" and "Just Win, Baby" were thrown around. Things were great. Ultimately, Al lost his golden touch and things fell apart. The NFL had evolved, and despite being the impetus of that evolution, Al Davis was left behind. Al assumed his style of football would always win in the NFL. He was wrong. The days of man coverage and 4 man pass rush have come and gone, yet the Raiders still cling to it. To be a great receiver in the NFL you need to be big, physical and have great hands more than you need a good 40 time. The Raiders still only consult the stopwatch before drafting receivers. Al Davis did things his way and his way only, and when it blew up in his face the finger was always pointed at someone else. Marcus Allen. Mike Shannahan. The City of Oakland. The City of Los Angeles. Jon Gruden. Tom Cable. Lane Kiffin. Al Davis was never wrong, and those around him dared not say otherwise, lest they find themselves being shown the door. Al's final years were spent surrounded by spineless yes men who watched as he threw money at Javon Walker, drafted JaMarcus Russell and Darrius Heyward-Bey and hired Lane Kiffin and Tom Cable despite anyone with a functioning brain knowing these were all terrible ideas. Yet even while in the grips of senility, he was still capable of making great decisions and finding diamonds in the rough. When he traded a 1st round pick to the Pats for aging defensive end Richard Seymour, I was the first person to scream out in terror. Turns out that trading for Big Rich was exactly the jolt this team needed. When he drafted Jacoby Ford and Jared Veldheer, I rolled my eyes. Now, Ford and Veldheer are both integral pieces to the future of the Raiders. Denarius Moore on the surface was nothing more than a stopwatch pick. In reality, he's going to be a solid NFL receiver. This is what makes me so conflicted about the death of Al Davis. Even in the midst of insanity, he was still capable of brilliance. This isn't a blind squirrel finding a nut. Al had become that old TV with the rabbit ear antennas down in your basement. The picture has faded and most of the time you get static, but when the antennas were turned just right you ended up getting perfect reception and for a few moments it was just like old times.

There were times when I thought I'd treat the death of Al Davis as a holiday. I thought I'd sing and dance, like I did in the middle of a classy Malibu restaurant the day I received a text saying JaMarcus Russell was released. I thought I'd hug my children and tell them our Raiders were headed back to relevance. I thought it would be a reason to celebrate. I feel none of this. Yet I don't feel sadness, either. As someone who lost a sister at the age of 22 to cancer, I don't get misty over people who die after living long, fulfilling lives. That's a rule I live by. Yet it's not that, either. I do feel a tinge of sadness because at the end of the day the team I have rooted for since I was 4 is the very projection of Al Davis, and his contributions to football are countless. The Silver and Black was once feared and respected, and that was all Al's doing. But I also have a great deal of anger towards Al for taking that once feared team and piledriving it head first into the ground through his own arrogance and refusal to hand over the reigns. I suppose there's also a sense of relief that perhaps now the insanity is over. Maybe now there will be some back and forth dialogue between ownership and management. Perhaps now there will be more Darren McFadden's drafted and fewer DHB's.

When all is said and done, we Raider fans are forced to remember Al Davis for all that he was. Outsiders will probably only remember the barely coherent, disheveled old man who still used overhead projectors during press conferences and made bad decisions. Those of us who were there and saw it all know his legacy is more than that. He was a brilliant man who was fatally flawed. He was a bright shining light that eventually grew dim. He was a mad scientist hellbent on world domination who eventually became a feeble old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. He was the bold, swashbuckling pirate who gave way to the aged, arthritic old fart who pissed and shat his pants. You cannot cling to the achievements of young, brilliant Al Davis while dismissing the hardships the decisions of his later years brought upon the franchise. Likewise, you cannot point out the fossil in the all white jumpsuit while looking past the visionary with the shrewd eye for talent that won 3 Super Bowl rings. Al Davis was both of these men. They both existed at different eras of the same life.

After reading through this I suppose I am an Al Davis apologist after all. As much as I'd like to say his death is good for the franchise, I'm forced to accept the reality that his life was what made the franchise. With equal parts of respect, anger and awe I say goodbye to Al Davis. I will always respect you for building a winner. I will always be pissed at you for ruining that winner. I will always be in awe of you for being able to be the biggest presence in every room you walked into, no matter how old and decrepit you became. Your legacy is firmly written in the blood of your enemies, and the heads of your vanquished foes will forever line the walls surrounding Raider Nation, the country you built. Your "Commitment to Excellence" will live on, albeit without your input or meddling. Your eye for finding gems in the NFL scrapheap will be missed. Your insistence on being right when clearly you were not will not be missed. As the doors to Valhalla fling open, the horn shall sound to welcome the arrival of a Raider. Take your seat at the table of the Immortals, and feast on meat and mead with Tatum, Dalby, Alzado, Matuszak, Blanda and all the other warriors who preceded you in death. Rest in peace, Raider.

Sebastian Janikowski Appreciation Post

When Al Davis used the 17th overall pick of the 2000 NFL Draft on a fat Polish place kicker the first thing that went through my mind was how this must be a joke that involved a solar powered flashlight or a screen door on a submarine. I was soon proved wrong. Sebastian Janikowski was very real. He was horrible his rookie season, making only 68.6% of his field goal attempts. He put together 4 solid seasons after that only to have a 3 year stretch where he was awful to the tune of 66.7%, 72% and 71.9%. If this were literally any other place kicker on the face of the Earth you can rest assured that I would be the first man out rallying villagers and handing out torches to drive the Polish SCUD Missile out of Raider Nation. Yet I couldn't make myself do this. There is one very specific reason why I have stood by my pudgy ball launcher.

I am in love with Sebastian Janikowski.

Somewhere along the way I was able to look past the missed kicks and DUI arrests and games missed because of gout. I was able to work through the absolute blob that he has become and how he slowly stumbles after kick returners on the rare event that one of his kickoffs doesn't end up in a different zip code. I closed my eyes and opened the door and let Seabass date rape his way into my heart. And now, that love and faith is being paid off because Sebastian has gone from "Fat, gouty freak who I defend for no reason other than him being fat and gouty" to being one of the best kickers in the NFL. Every week when Seabass waddles out onto the field, everyone watching the game knows something magical is about to happen. Look no further than opening night in Denver when Janikowski tied Jason Elam and Tom Dempsey's all-time record by blasting a 63 yarder that would've been good from 65. The NFL did Seabass a solid by moving kickoffs up to the 35. The only time you're going to see a kickoff being returned against the Raiders is if Seabass allows it. Of his 17 kickoffs through the 1st 3 games, 4 of them have been returned, and 2 of those were on squib kicks. Oh, and he's now consistently in the 80% range when it comes to accuracy. Seabass is no longer one of Uncle Al's Oddities. He's a damned good kicker. Of course, he'll still get accused of false imprisonment and sexual misconduct from time to time, but that's just Seabass being Seabass. Shine on, you crazy Polock son of bitch!

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #23: OAKLAND RAIDERS

PERTINENT DATA: 8-8 last year; 65 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): Look, I want the Raiders to do well. This is for a couple of different reasons. First, and most importantly, they are my boy Harpo’s team and I want good things to happen to him in all areas of his life. This includes his sports teams. (Notable exceptions include the A’s playing the Tigers in the ALCS or his Notre Dame Fighting Assholes – rumor has it that the new mascot is going to be Lou Holtz spreading his ass cheeks at midfield while he spits and lisps out of it, which is horrible, horrible and I apologize for that mental image as well as the uncreative “Fighting Assholes” moniker but sometimes creativity has to take a back seat to simple malice – playing my Michigan Wolverines, in which case, fuck them and I hope he cries, but I digress) But I also want the Raiders to do well because they are the team that spawned Ken Stabler and I think you all know how I feel about that dude by now. Also, if I hadn’t been born into Lions fandom and was forced to pick a team to root for, I’m pretty sure that I would have chosen the Raiders simply because of their reputation, which might sound juvenile, but I don’t care. When you’re a kid, a helmet filled with crushed up beer cans and dudes nicknamed Hitman seem pretty fucking cool. And while the glory days of the Raiders may have come a bit before my time, I am old enough to at least remember their fading glory years of the late-80s/early-90s. They had Bo Jackson, man and they worse Silver and Black and they would stab you and then fuck your girlfriend while you sobbed and bled in the corner. That sort of thing appeals to my naturally rebellious, fuck the man side, which I’ll be the first to admit is kind of stupid and dopey and immature, but sports fandom itself is stupid and dopey and immature and so those two parts of me naturally tend to intersect. But I have explained all this before and I realize I still haven’t even laid out the best case scenario so I’ll just move on. Forgive me. Anyway, even though I have a soft spot in my warrior heart for the Raiders, Al Davis is a weird old man, and he is just embarrassing himself and Raiders fans like Harpo. As long as he’s around, gumming his applesauce, eating babies, taking afternoon naps, scaring the shit out of, well, everyone (I was going to say little kids, but shit, have you seen Al Davis? Motherfucker looks like the Crypt Keeper if the Crypt Keeper got strung out on meth and taken a billion dicks to the face.) and generally using his senile old dried up wits to make shitty decision after shitty decision, the Raiders aren’t going to be doing too well. So there’s a natural upper limit for the Raiders in these dark days when the Vampire Davis roams the streets of Oakland at night and drunk dials Pete Rozelle in the mornings even though Pete Rozelle’s been dead for almost 15 years now. There’s only so much they can do with his withered old ass in the way. Still, this team somehow managed to go 8-8 last season. Then again, that was before they stupidly let Nnamdi Asomugha walk. But Darren McFadden finally broke out, there are some decent players on defense like Rolando McClain, so maybe they can pull 8-8 out of their asses again. Then again, probably not. Such is life.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): Al Davis might have been a football genius in 1975, but at this point he is a crazy old man who refuses to die and looks like he might have leprosy, but still wears gaudy football diamond watches and shit like that. More importantly than refusing to die, he refuses to let other people make decisions about the Raiders, which means you have a half-senile old crazy man deciding what players and coaches to build an NFL team with. And to his credit, the Raiders are not completely bad. Really, it says something terrible for the Redskins and Bengals that even a crazy senile old man can be as competent as them. Still though, the Raiders lack direction, other than going deep, which they don't have the tools to do. Speaking of tools, Jason Campbell is there at QB still, without Bruce Gradkowski to be mediocrely better. That does not bode well for the Raiders as a successful team, nor in their ability to go deep, like Mr. Davis has been known to call down to the sidelines for and want. The fact they dropped a 3rd round pick on Terrelle Pryor only makes this reality even more real. Really, their best chance at success was keeping Tom Cable on board to beat people into as much success as possible.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Neil): Sebastian Janikowski is an asshole degenerate, probably an alcoholic and he’s more likely to be found dead in a freak power boat accident within the next five years than he is to be part of a winning team, but fuck it, that makes him the perfect Oakland Raider, you know? I can see Seabass riding with Kenny Stabler. I can see him getting thrown headfirst through a plate glass window in a giant bar brawl while Lyle Alzado beats the shit out a whole fraternity and Stabler tries to fuck all their girlfriends. Sure Janikowski is kind of the fuck up of the whole Raider family, more likely to end up getting laughed at by Kenny and the boys after he has to go to the hospital for a 12 hour hard-on after overdosing on boner pills than to actually do anything cool, but he’s still family, you know? And as we always say here at Armchair Linebacker, family comes first. (Unless your family sucks, in which case to hell with them.)
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Raven): A normal football interweb asshole would be like, "Lololol Sebastian Janikowski!" but there's no reason not to love that overweight drunken Polock, as Neil has pointed out. He is more Raider than almost anybody in recent memory. I am going to say Chimdi Chekwa, a back-up CB, because I think he might be the guy who accidentally made Al Davis think it was okay to just outright let Nnamdi Asomugha go as a free agent in his prime, retardedly. I bet Davis thought they were basically the same dude, with the same abilities, and figured he could save a few dollars. Or maybe Chekwa is really fast in the 40, which always makes old Al take to a guy.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Rock Cartwright.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): Shit, in a perfect world, Al Davis would be cornered by villagers (Man, you DO NOT want to fuck with Oakland villagers), all armed with pitchforks tipped with garlic and holy water and then the Raiders could finally move on. In this perfect world, Uncle Al would leave the team in his will to Kenny Stabler because he loves him more than anyone of his blood (and also because all Al’s actual children died of old age back in the 15th century while he was terrorizing the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains) and Kenny brings back the glory days of the Raiders. Now I know this is at least the third scenario already in which I’ve had Ken Stabler taking control of a team, but this section is titled “In a Perfect World” for a reason. Roll your eyes at me all you want, but just know that you are dead inside. I wonder if Kenny needs a ghostwriter for the sequel to his autobiography...
PROGNOSIS (Raven): The Raiders year will be one of ugliness. There is just enough good young talent in the forms of Darren McFadden and Rolondo McClain to keep the criminally insane fanbase at bay yet again, but 4-12 and last in the AFC West is gonna be the final tally. Which means the drunken Raider fanbase will only win the parking lot fights and shootouts in San Diego this year. God bless Raiders fans everywhere, especially are believed Miguelito Garza, who is a Mexican, does drive a truck, and almost made Eddie George cry one time while being heckled by Mike at the edges of the Black Hole.

Well, I Pretty Much HAVE To Post About This

[Alternate Title: You Don't See Jets and Giants Fans Doing This Bullshit To Each Other.]

Been a while.

For months, the lockout was the dead, rotting elephant carcass in the room that nobody wanted to talk about, lest they be caught acknowledging its existence as a problem and thus being obligated to clean it up/dispose of it. Kinda like when you live with roommates and everybody keeps pushing the full trashcan down when they add one more piece of trash to it, because if it actually overflows or starts falling out while they are touching it, they have to change the bag. Plus, the temptation would have been there to explain how the San Francisco 49ers were particularly handcuffed and screwed over by the lockout in ways that some other teams were not -- namely, nobody could sign or trade for new quarterbacks and were instead stuck with their current one, which in the 49ers' woeful case is means ONE MORE YEAR OF ALEX SMITH FUCK YEAH RENEW YOUR SEASON TICKETS RIGHT N--hey where are you going. But that seemed a little petty when we were all staring NO FOOTBALL or at least Reduced Football in the face. Besides, I've started to soften on the kid. This tends to happen to us 49er fans when the 49ers are not actually playing, and time and alcohol dull the memories of just how good he is in camp or in practice yet how bad he is once the game actually starts. I even had to look back through my old posts to recover my weary, oft-repeated battle cry of He Checked Down To The Fullback On A Flea-Flicker (and overthrew him).

One day, I will write the full chronicle of the abusive co-dependent 7 year relationship between #1 Draft Pick 49er QB Alex Smith, 49er fans, and the York Family-Run 49er organization. There will be a tie-in to the history of the 49er team [because really, the past is way more fun than the present and the immediate future] and the history of 49er QBs [as soon as I can be arsed to google image search that "evolution of man" picture, flip it around so it depicts De-Evolution, and photoshop Alex onto the knuckledragging backward hominid that everything coming before was an improvement on]. But for now, there's something that really needs to be mentioned.

Remember months ago, when our man Neil wrote that insightful piece on the similarity between the emotional bonds we form with our American Football teams and the way people in Europe form bonds with their Soccer Teams? It was a nice look at how the sports aren't really THAT different and sports fans are comparably fanatical and emotionally invested the world over, regardless of the sport in question?

Well, here's the nasty look. The ugly side of that coin, if you will. Football and Soccer fans are also very much alike in that they are both equally capable of using their "love" of their team as an excuse to be violent thugs who assault and kill fans wearing the other team's jersey.

"Kwame Harris sucked WAY more when he played for us!"

"Bullshit! He had twice as many holding penalties while on our team!"
"Oh it's ON now! GET 'IM!"
Seriously, this is a fucking PRESEASON GAME. We're literally, to quote Allen Iverson, Talking About PRACTICE.

Would that it were only the isolated drunken fisticuffs seen in this photo, which features the hilarious irony of replica Jerry Rice jerseys for both teams separated only by the punchers and single punchee. If you haven't heard by now, fans were actually beaten and shot at the traditional 49ers vs Raiders preseason game last Saturday.

There's also more damning evidence on Youtube, if you care to look for it (I hear the chickfight in the parking lot is very competitive. By the way, notice when this sort of thing goes down people immediately whip out their phones to record the incident for youtube instead of using their phone to, oh, I dunno, call the cops? Or at least "security"? Hmmm.)

This is the second (well, sometimes third) preseason game every year for both teams. Really, every year since I've been alive, conscious, and turning on the TV to watch football, this has been on the preseason schedule. It ALWAYS leads to predictable stupid posturing and fake hype by fans, radio personalities, sports journalists, all deliberately trying to lose sight of this being a stupid PRACTICE GAME where both teams are trying to figure out who to cut and to not get anyone hurt. Not that shooting people would acceptable after the quadrennial regular season match up, [or even, God Forbid, these teams both get good again at the same time and end up in a Super Bowl together], but it just so conveniently underscores how senseless and stupid and pathetic this all is that it happened in a game that LITERALLY DOES NOT COUNT. "Bragging Rights" has perhaps never sounded as impotent and stupid as it does when muttered by a 49er (or Raider) fan in this week. Being a 49er fan for life who also happens to be very fond of the Raiders since they moved back to the area, I find all this especially tiresome. There are always a few drunken fights, and there's always a couple more every four years when they play a game that counts. I could do without with the bullshit that comes with this annual preseason game. And now, it looks like I'll get to, along with the rest of "Raider Nation" and the 49er Faithful.

In the wake of this, The Boy-King of the Yorkist Regime, 49er Team President Jed, has recommended to the NFL and the Raiders that these two teams not schedule their traditional preseason game against each other anymore. Naturally, some are already calling this an overreaction, since we never pass up a chance to second-guess a York. But really, I say it's the right call. Good Riddance. If the kids can't behave when playing with the toy, then take the toy away, and 49er and Raider fans -- despite living next to each other for 50 years, having to share a stadium way back when (and probably will once again, if they both want and need a brand new football stadium [they do; Candlestick and the Mausoleum are dumps. Sure they're historical, but so is the Roman Coliseum and you don't see the Italians still using THAT do you?]) -- apparently cannot share, and cannot accept that the teams are so similiar both in Glorious Past and Milquetoast Present, and that they are NOT analogues or surrogates for any sense of intra-sectional rivalries or class divides [really, can ANY NFL team claim to be a blue collar team for blue collar fans when parking costs $25 and a tickets cost upwards of $100?]. It's sad that people had to get seriously hurt for this to happen, but Good Riddance to this preseason game. Flush the bullshit, for our own protection.

I don't know who got cut, and I only remember who won this game because the 49ers 8th string running back had a unique name (Xavier Omon) and he scored a late touchdown so I had to look at the boxscore graphic in the upper left corner. Honestly, who gives a shit?

Luckily, none of the victims have died. But here you go. For all our smug stereotyping of the overly fanatical club soccer fan who drinks, riots, and sets fires pending their team's winning or losing, a reminder that we are just as emotionally overinvested in this game and we can be just as bad, and we will not let price gouging at the beer tap deter us, no sir. At least the soccer hooligans only set fire to stuff after games that actually count in the standings.

2011 Oakland Raiders Preview: More of the Same

Hey y'all, it's been a while. I basically sat out the lockout because, frankly, I was kinda burned out of football. Also, the 2010 Raiders exceeded my expectations by finishing 8-8, and I am not good at writing about things that don't anger me. Anger is what motivates me, as it does every other man of Latino descent, and when the anger is lacking, so to is the inspiration. Well, have no fear. Geriatric shit head Al Davis is back at work doing what he does best: piss me off. An offseason of subtraction by subtraction has lead to what will no doubt be a very average Oakland Raiders team. Let us take a look at how Uncle Al set about sabotaging the team before it ever stepped onto the practice field...

1- Nnamdi Asomugha goes bye bye. OK, we all knew this was going to happen. I loved Nnamdi, but the fact that he pulled down nearly $17 million last season while producing exactly ZERO picks lightened the blow a little. Now, I understand that the other team would refuse to throw his way unless they had to and he locked down his side of the field. I get that. The fact remains that last year the Raiders had a payroll north of $150 million and still didn't make the playoffs despite running the table in their division. So, when it came time to start cutting payroll and Nnamdi's contract had a termination clause that kicked in when he didn't intercept a single pass, well, peace out homie. As if that wasn't bad enough, Al Davis decided that instead of replacing Nnamdi with a good, younger free agent corner like James Joseph, he would instead throw insane amounts of money at human tiki torch Stanford Routt. Apparently Al is working under the assumption that if you pay a player like a star that he will then in turn play like one. Stanford Routt is not a star. Never has been, and in all likelihood never will. He was better last season than he had been previously, but he was not good. He was barely passable as a nickle corner. Now he's going to be the man out on the island. And if that wasn't bad enough, he's the Raiders best corner. The other starting spot will probably be held down by a revolving door of Chris Johnson, Walter McFadden, Jeremy Ware and rookies DeMarcus VanDyke, Chimdi Chekwa and the undrafted Sterling Moore. Johnson is beyond horrible. McFadden is tiny and contributes nothing against the run, although most teams don't seem to worry about running the ball when he's on the field due to the fact that his man is usually wide open. Jeremy Ware was a late pick last year and has the makings of a decent nickle back, but probably can't be a starter. VanDyke is fast (which explains why he was drafted by the Raiders) but is meth head-level skinny and can't tackle. Chekwa is hurt and is going to be a work in progress. Believe it or not, the player with the most upside out of this group might actually be Moore. Sad, but true.

2- Robert Gallery leaves, no upgrades made on the O-Line. The Raiders offensive line was terrible last season. Jared Veldheer played every position on the line last year, and is going to be given every chance to be the starting left tackle. He follows in the footsteps of Mario Henderson, who was given every chance to be the starting left tackle, who was following in the footsteps of Robert Gallery, who was given every chance to be the starting left tackle. I'll give the departed Gallery some credit here: He was an OK guard. Of course, you don't spend the #2 overall pick on an OK guard. Now that he's gone, the starting left guard job will probably go to second round pick Stefen Wisniewski. He'll have his ups and downs, but he's a Wisniewski, damnit, and that's all that matters to Al. Samson Satele is back at center, and he's OK. The right side of the line is an absolute abortion, however. Right guard Cooper Carlisle is useless. Right tackle Khalif Barnes is doing his best Kwame Harris impression, drawing flag after flag when he's not too busy allowing sacks. 4th rounder Joesph Barksdale is supposedly going to be the starting right tackle eventually, but he's not anywhere close to being ready. Daniel Loper is the utility man, able to play all line positions equally bad. This is not a good unit, and Jason Campbell needs time to be successful. Time is one thing this crappy unit will not give him.

3- Darrius Heyward-Bey is still on the team. I don't get it. He's terrible. He can't catch a thrown football. He's not getting any better. Just admit you were wrong and cut your losses. On top of this, the "veteran receiver" that Hue Jackson talked about all offseason never materialized. Another year of Jason Campbell throwing to Jacoby Ford and a bunch of guys who probably won't hold on to the ball. Great. On the plus side, Denarius Moore looks nice, but the Arena League and CFL are full of players who made some nice plays in the preseason. I'm not sweating the Zach Miller departure because Kevin Boss is pretty much his equal in the passing game with the added bonus of actually being able to block someone.

These 3 areas more than anything will be what keeps the Raiders from making the playoffs yet again. Expect a 7-9 season and me melting down a few times. Par for the course.

JACOBY FORD, I WANT TO HAVE YOUR RETARDED BABY!

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. What I witnessed today wasn't just a sloppy, poorly officiated slugfest. It was literally one tiny ass little dude taking an entire shitty team and putting them on his tiny little shoulders and winning a football game on his own. When the Raiders traded homegrown linebacker Kirk Morrison to the Jags for a 4th round pick that they used on Ford, I will admit that I was pissed. His rep sounded an awful lot like another wide receiver they drafted who hasn't exactly paid off. "Track guy, better athlete than football player". Let there be no mistake, Jacoby Ford is a football player. This team needed someone to slap the shit out of Jason Campbell. They needed someone on offense other than DMC to say OH HELL NAW, WE ARE NOT LOSING THIS ONE! Ford did just that, returning the second half kickoff for a TD after Campbell did another one of his patented first half Jamarcus Russell impressions. Without Zach Miller, Louis Murphy and the eternally injured Chaz Shillens, they needed someone who could catch a pass without lining up in the backfield first. Ford did that as well, catching 6 for 148 yards, including a pass on the final drive in the 4th where he straight up ripped an interception out of the hands of Brandon Flowers, setting up the game tying field goal. In OT he hauled in a another clutch sliding catch on another horribly under thrown Campbell wounded duck that lead to the game winner. This team was without 3 of its best players and got penalized in every conceivable way. Not to mention that they played without an challenges from mid way though the second quarter because Tom Cable will seemingly challenge anything. CB Chris Johnson was used like a plastic fuck doll in the 1st half, yet made a couple big plays in the second. Tyvon Branch left the game in 3rd with a concussion. This was a game that the Raiders have typically lost over the last 8 years, and yet they found a way. They have their first 3 game win streak since 2002. They're 3-0 in the division. They're going into the much needed bye week with a winning record. They played a home game that wasn't blacked out. Something is starting to happen here, and it's about fucking time. The Raiders are officially fun to watch again, and the Chiefs may have just started their long descent back down to Earth.

Hey Queefs, FUCK YOU

It feels good to be able to say that again. The Chiefs and Raiders have been absolute shit recently, and as such their rivalry has been put on hold. Yes, I know neither one of them are really any good and that their success so far is mostly smoke and mirrors, but the fact that these two teams are playing a game in week 9 that actually MEANS SOMETHING for a change, well, it's kinda cool. That said, fuck Kansas City. Fuck Lamar Hunt's corpse. Fuck Len Dawson. Fuck Christian Okoye. Fuck the ghost of Derrick Thomas. Fuck the spirit of Hank Stram. Fuck Will Shields. Fuck Neil Smith. Fuck Priest Holmes. Fuck Deron Cherry. Fuck Stephone Paige. Fuck Albert Lewis. Fuck Percy Snow. Fuck Kevin Ross. Fuck Art Still. Take all of their stupid asses and load them onto a bus, then have a suicidal mother ghost ride that bitch into a lake. It's KC week, mother fucker.

OK, now that I got that out of my system I'd like to say this: The Raiders probably won't win this game. Here's the fact of the matter: The Raiders secondary is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay shitty once you remove Nnamdi from the equation. A lot of my fellow Raider fans are letting our minimal success go to their heads and are making grand statements like MICHAEL HUFF WILL BE FINE AT CORNER! or STANFORD ROUTT WILL SHUT DWAYNE BOWE DOWN! forgetting that both Huff and Routt are terrible. Routt draws 2 or 3 flags each week, usually on 3rd down when the defense is about to get off the field. Huff still cannot tackle and constantly gets beat deep after taking horrible angles. Neither one inspires any confidence in me, and if Nnamdi ends up missing the game there's a good chance the Raiders will get boat raced.

On the offensive side of the ball, the Raiders are impossible to figure out. Last week they looked like the same clueless team that couldn't get in the end zone against San Francisco. Hue Jackson's idiotic play calling of MCFADDEN UP THE MIDDLE FOR TWO YARDS, MCFADDEN UP THE MIDDLE FOR TWO YARDS, INCOMPLETE PASS, PUNT had me thinking that they were going to once again piss the momentum of a huge win the week before down their collective legs. Then they came out in the second half and wrecked shop. Darren McFadden is the key to making their attack work. He is the one guy they have who is a reliable threat. The biggest difference with him this year is that he's not dancing around the hole. He's making one cut, getting to the edge and running behind his pads. He has absolutely laid out some big hitters this year. Yet for some reason Hue insists on running him up the middle 6-7 times before he realizes that he isn't a sledgehammer like Michael Bush and starts running him outside, where he makes plays. His health is the linchpin for the Raiders success. With him, they can score. Without him, they're screwed. Marcel Reece has also been a huge weapon at fullback, something they haven't had in a long time. He might be the fastest fullback in the NFL.

The offensive line, while it has performed better recently, is still very much a work in progress. They seem to have finally given up on Mario Henderson, which is in everyones best interest. As inconsistent as Jared Veldheer is, he's light years ahead of Mario. Robert Gallery is playing hurt, and last week he had 3 penalties. Samson Satele has been OK, but has a tendency to get hurt. Cooper Carlisle and Langston Walker are walking abortions. They've been using Khalif Barnes as a pass eligible tight end a lot lately, and have a weird ass formation where he lines up at left guard and they move the left tackle over next to the right tackle in an effort to over stack the line on one side. The formation seems to work, and they use it 3 or 4 times a week. If you can't impress them with talent, dazzle them with bullshit, I guess.

Darrius Heyward-Bey FINALLY broke off a big play. He is a strange guy to figure out. He looked like Tim Brown in his prime against the Rams, and was pretty much M.I.A. since then. With Louis Murphy out and Chaz Shillens yet to play a down this year, the receiving corps is stretched pretty thin. Nick Miller is banged up, which means we could see a lot of Jacoby Ford or Johnnie Lee Higgins. TE Zach Miller is questionable and left the Seattle game early on, and if he's a no go they'll have to start butter fingered Brandon Myers, or "Not Zach" as I dubbed him last year. The problem is, Not Zach is coming back from an injury himself, and the Raiders only carry two TE's. I don't see the wideouts or tight ends playing a big part this week.

If the Raiders are going to win this game they absolutely must get in Matt Cassel's face. The last two weeks they have killed Kyle Orton and Matt Hasselbeck. Coordinator John Marshall has abandoned his vanilla play calling and is now bringing the heat from every direction. Kamerion Wimbley, Matt Shaughnessy, Richard Seymour, Lamarr Houston and even the much maligned Tommy Kelly have been absolutely crushing bitches. Rolando McClain is getting better each week, and Quentin Groves has been way better than advertised. Wimbley looks like he's finally going to fulfill his promise he showed as rookie for the Browns back in '06. This is the main difference from last season, they actually have a game plan on defense, and the talent to make it work. If anything, the play from the d-line and linebackers has helped cover up the secondary's short comings.

Jason Campbell has had two good games in a row, and Tom Cable still says Bruce Gradkowski will be the starter when he's healthy. I guess Cable isn't willing to forget the Tennessee, St. Louis and San Francisco games, either. I really have no idea who the real Jason Campbell is, but if he's capable of playing anything at all like he has in the last two games, you'd be an idiot to sit him. He's getting more time in the pocket and actually has shown the ability to move around and avoid sacks. He hasn't developed a bond with any of his receivers yet, but he's more than happy to throw it to Zach, DMC or Reece.

So things are possibly looking up here in Raiderville. Or not. We really have no idea what we have yet. All I know is the last two weeks they have looked like a different team from the one who shit the bed against the Titans and 49ers. Hell, if they made one more play against Houston and if Seabass makes a chip shot against Arizona, we're looking at a 6-2 team. Are they really that good? I doubt it, but I'd love for them to prove me wrong.

Week 6: I Am Conflicted

A picture is worth a thousand words. Or, in this case, 16 football seasons.

So this week, the San Francisco 49ers continue the 2010 Crushing Disappointment Tour by playing host to their cousins and cross-bay rivals, the Oakland Raiders. The 49ers are 0-5 and currently running away with the "biggest disappointment of 2010" award, their head coach quickly turning from "beloved charismatic leader and difference maker" to "overmatched motivational speaker who can yell at people but can't actually coach and needs to be fired now!" (such is the nature of sports fans; a winning streak means the team is inevitably super bowl bound; a losing streak means everyone involved is an incompetent and embarrassing failure who needs to be fired then tarred and feathered while they're cleaning out their desk); their starting quarterback a former #1 overall pick and heir to the franchise's unsurpassed Quarterbacking Legacy turned public whipping boy and effigy for organization-wide shortcomings and fan frustration (to the point where he was booed after every single play and the fans openly chanted for his backup to be put in the game, but this is an essay I'm saving for a later week), and an owner who has inherited the team from his business-savvy but football-foolish parents and gone from "spitting image of his uncle, the great Eddie DeBartolo who's gonna turn the team around just like Eddie did!" to the guy who is angrily tweeting at reporters that his 0-5 team is still guaranteed to win the division this year. No, really, he actually did that.

It takes a massive effort to out-dysfunction the modern-day Oakland Raiders, but that's the one competition the 49ers have managed to win this year.

The Raiders, for their part, come in at a 2-3 that truly could and should be 3-2 if kicking field goals truly were as easy a task as most NFL kickers make it appear to be and all NFL pre-game show "expert" pundits smugly assume it to be. No small feat for a team that has spent the last seven seasons being a woeful punchline for those same smug pundits, especially considering they've managed this without a single professional-quality offensive lineman, as ACLB's official Raider correspondent Harpo has routinely pointed out. They even broke their 13 game losing streak against divisional foe the San Diego Chargers last week. There's signs of life in The Oakland Coliseum these days; though of course they've spent so long discouraging even their fearsome fan base that every one of their 3 home games this season has been blacked out; The Relevance Revolution Will, Apparently, Not Be Televised.

So anyway, this week the battle of the bay is on us, as a rare 2-team NFL market squabbles amongst itself as it does once every four years in a game that matters. The 49ers and Raiders, for as much they accentuate their differences from each other in their marketing and as much as their respective fan bases insult and stereotype each other as being from different walks of life -- as if NFL teams truly did still represent communities and cultures and ideologies and weren't just the bunch of millionaire mercenaries toiling for billionaire corporate overlords we deep down know them all to be, because they've priced us out of even attending their home games live and attempt to charge us shakedown fees to tailgate on "their" property even though those stadiums were built with OUR tax dollars...but that is definitely an essay for another time -- but anyway for all their aesthetic and superficial differences, the 49ers and Raiders are almost a perfect mirror image of each other. Both teams have glorious pasts, filled with Super Bowl victories, Hall Of Fame Players, iconic uniforms, and international fan bases that spawned long before the league decided it needed to "cultivate new markets" overseas with a token regular season game in London.

More recently, of course, the franchises have mirrored each other in misery. Both last played a playoff game in 2002 (oddly enough, both teams' last playoff game involved getting their ass kicked by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Like I said, mirror images). Both teams have since embarked on the worst stretches of epic futility either franchise has ever experienced (the Raiders have established a new NFL record for consecutive seasons of 11+ losses; the 49ers started this season with a record of 33-67 in their last 100 games, a precise .333 winning percentage; that's 2 out of every 3 games for six years.) Both organizations venerate their glory days and insist their return is literally Just Around The Corner because, as it turns out, it's a lot easier to do that than to hire football-smart General Managers to run your team effectively in the modern NFL and build a glorious, or even respectable, present. To further illustrate that point, both teams were retarded enough in recent years to send Jeff Garcia packing when he was at least twice as good as any of the QB's they kept instead of him.

And, as you readers can probably infer from the title of this entry if not the content, the teams are finally similar in the fact that I'm a big fan of both. While the 49ers will always be first in my sports-fan heart, having earned my loyalty during my childhood when they were the NFL's version of the old British Empire; spanning the globe, colonizing (and plundering) and dominating teams across the league like so many underdeveloped African or Southeast Asian Nations, adding Super Bowls to the trophy case left and right as though they were more rubies and emeralds in the Imperial Crown, and basically being that one really obnoxious team that fans across the rest of the nation either jumped on the bandwagon in an attempt at front-running or utterly reviled for either squeaking by or crushing their favorite team in the playoffs again and again and again year after year after year. Meanwhile the Raiders were growing out their beard to turn heel and represent Los Angeles for 13 seasons, but upon their return to the Bay Area I converted my basement into a bedroom and made room for them, too. I'd heard and read about their lore as a kid, too, and thought it would be cool to have them back and have TWO good football teams to watch regularly, even though it quickly turned out that just because the Raiders were back in Oakland, they weren't really the Oakland Raiders anymore (and haven't been since, but I'm treading on Harpo's territory now).

This is my brain. This is my brain on Football, only both the angry yelling
and laughter at the absurd are both uselessly aimed outward at an indifferent world.
Any Questions?

Fast Forward to today: instead of getting two GOOD teams to watch regularly, I am stuck watching two shitty teams bumble their way through a macabre dance in which they attempt to out-embarrass each other; one on my TV and the other on sketchy internet streams on my computer because they're blacked out (again), putting gray hairs on my head and foul words on my tongue. For me, Sundays invariably consist of watching Six Non-Stop Hours of Shitty Football. Since 2003 I have, in effect, watched 14 consecutive seasons of constant losing, busted draft picks, incompetent management, poor coaching, and worst of all opposing fan bases pathetically trash talking each other (when fans of a 6-10 team talk shit at fans of a 4-12 team, it comes off much like when the two Special Ed kids in school challenge each other to a fight on the playground at recess), with all signs pointing toward upping that total to 16 by this December. This would be bad enough, but it is made all the worse not only by how good these teams used to be, but the fact that this was SUPPOSED to be the year the 49ers finally dragged themselves out of that quicksand of sucktitude and were a respectable, nay, even good team again, because their pre-school division was Theirs By Default. Not the same as Theirs By Birthright like it was in the 80s and 90s, but damn it, close enough.

So, with my dual loyalties, naturally I hoped that by the time this game rolled around at least one team would be in such a favorable position they could afford to lose this game, thus I could pick a side safely knowing that both teams could come out ahead. Instead, the opposite is true; both teams badly need this win and thus, no matter what, at least one of them comes out of this game with Zero Hope. It's like Sophie's Choice, only with football. Oh, and except that even the "winner" of this game is effectively doomed anyway and is just delaying the inevitable for a couple weeks by claiming Local Bragging Rights, especially the 49ers. So the choice is utterly irrelevant and no one will be saved anyway. So, not really like Sophie's Choice at all, then. Nevermind. They're 0-5 and, despite what Jed York and Mike Singletary would love to tell you, they are not winning the division this season. All they can really do by winning this game is bury the Raiders at 2-4 right now, instead of allowing the Raiders the privilege of burying themselves in a couple weeks. If the 49ers lose, The Raiders will get to pretend for a while longer at 3-3, while the Niners themselves will be, at 0-6, in a hole so deep and awful and without hope and light that we fans can only laugh at it, them, and ourselves, to continue the process of self-abuse; wanting the team to finish as poorly as possible so as to get that #1 draft pick, booing the starting quarterback off the field and demanding his backup start playing even though every single one of us knows that David Carr cannot possibly be any better and is in all probability an inferior athlete who is even more lacking in confidence than Alex Smith and will thus fuck things up even worse, mock the head coach we thought was the bee's knees last season, and demand management blow the team up even though there's a lot of good parts who don't deserve to be blown up and it would be foolish to throw away plus we hate management and ownership and don't trust them to rebuild the team properly anyway since after all their lack of skill or even enthusiasm in that department is what led to this team being so shitty in the first place.

Sadly, even if the 49ers finally grab a win this week, I won't really be able to enjoy it. While I'm not much of one for predictions (that's an entry for another correspondent, as Neil's predictions posts in re: his beloved Lions are far more thorough and entertaining and sometimes even semi-accurate than I could ever manage), I will say I think the 49ers will win this game, but I feel I must preface that by saying my two reasons for for anticipating a 49er victory are:

1) When this game rolls around every few seasons, the 49ers invariably win out in my heart; the Raiders are a close second but the 49ers are the clear #1, and I can't help but root for them at all times.

2) While the 49ers are the masters of falling way behind and pulling off the 3-points-short comeback, the Raiders are grand masters of blowing slender 4th quarter leads even to shitty teams. Furthermore, I have suffered through enough Raider football over the last seven years to know they cannot be counted on to play two good games in a row, and until they prove otherwise, since they actually won last week I must conclude they are due to come in to Candlestick and lay an egg so big even Alex Smith can't fumble it away.

The Endless Downward Spiral

Last week Raider Nation witnessed a fat, drunken, date rapist of a place kicker lose a game for the actual football players. This week, it's the real players turn. Here is a list of quick bullet points of the things today that are making me want to kill things.

- Langston Walker, Cooper Carlisle, Samson Satele, Daniel Lober and Mario Henderson. OK, maybe it's not fair to Lober to include him in this, but at the same time, he's guilty by association. The o-line has been completely and totally overmatched today. The reason for this is that not a single one of them have business being on an NFL roster. Look, this isn't anything I haven't been screaming about for weeks and weeks. Robert Gallery's injury isn't the excuse. It's all about the lack of talent. Period. These are the guys Tom Cable wanted. None of them are capable of keeping a quarterback from getting killed. They have done nothing to fix this. Rotating your incapable players in and out with other incapable players does nothing to fix the problem. This, more than anything else, is why the Raiders lose close football games.

- The lack of anything resembling run defense. Week after week, the Raiders give up long touchdown runs. I'll cut Rolando McClain some slack, being that he's a rookie being asked to run a defense. He gets better each week, and makes most of his tackles. My beef is mostly with Tyvon Branch and Michael Huff. Branch made a name for himself mostly as a special teams player and finds himself as the starting strong safety. He's fast and occasionally makes the big pop that clears the cobwebs in Al Davis' brain long enough to have a brief Jack Tatum flashback. The thing that separates Branch and the Assassin is the fact that Jack Tatum actually made plays. He tackled people. He picked off passes. Tyvon does neither of these things, and each week running backs run through his polite embraces that he calls "tackles" and run for miles and miles. Free safety Michael Huff is pretty much the exact same player as Branch. He has done nothing to fulfill the hype that accompanied him out of Texas. They are both a liability and are by far the biggest weaknesses on the defensive side of the ball.

- Louis Murphy and Darius Heyward-Bey. On the Raiders final drive they both dropped would be first down passes. Murphy's muff was the worst because it ended up being picked. This isn't the first time Murphy has lost his focus at the worst possible time, and his mental lapses are getting to be particularly irritating. When he doesn't have his head up his ass, he's by far the best receiver the Raiders have. DHB is quickly becoming the master of the 1 catch box score. The Raiders keep telling us that he's making strides, but he has yet to put together two good games in a row. For a guy who is supposed to be a deep threat, he has yet to catch a deep bomb. I'm running out of patience with him.

-Johnnie Lee Higgins. 3 punt returns. 4 yards. And those all came on one return. Granted, the kick coverage has been crap, but on all 3 of those returns he would have been better off making fair catches. He pulls this crap week after week, and outside of a 54 yard return he had against the Rams, he has done nothing.

Sitting with a 1-3 record and San Diego coming to town next week, this year is already in danger of being the next in a seemingly endless line of double digit loss seasons. With our first round pick headed to New England next year, it looks like I might be actively rooting for a lock out.

Two Weeks in and a QB Controversy

Well, Jason Campbell apparently no longer knows how to play football, so it looks like I'm stuck with the plucky Polish underdog Bruce Gradkowski once again. Before I once again get buried by my fellow Raider fans who walk around in their TEAM BRUCE t-shirts allow me to say this: I DON'T HATE BRUCE GRADKOWSKI! I really don't. I just don't happen to think he's the noodle armed messiah many people have made him out to be. He's well respected by his teammates, which is pretty much the number one intangible any quarterback needs if they want to win in the NFL. There is no denying that the offense ran about a billion times more effectively when he took over for Campbell last week against the Rams. The team played harder and the entire stadium came alive. And if being beloved by fans and teammates was all it took to be a good NFL QB, Bruce would be a Pro Bowler. Unfortunately, in order to succeed in the NFL you need physical talent, and ol' Brucie boy comes up on the short end of the stick in that regard. He's short, frail and has a weak arm. He can make all the short passes all day long, but Corky from "Life Goes On" throws a better deep ball. He has a propensity for moving around in the pocket, which is a good thing because with the Raiders Swiss cheese o-line, mobility is an absolute must. In fact, that is probably what Campbell's biggest problem was. After getting curb stomped in DC last year, he has no pocket presence and looks to throw the ball away at the first sign of trouble. This is where Bruce is head and shoulders above Jason. Of course, he also ends up taking a bunch of horrific shots because of his more balls than brains approach he takes while scrambling. Throw in the fact that his bones are hollow and you can see why I'm skeptical. Robert Gallery is probably going to miss Sunday's game against Arizona, and that has me worried for Bruce's wellbeing. Darnell Dockett is probably going to have a field day bull rushing right over Samson Satele and Cooper Carlisle. There is no denying that Bruce gives the Raiders a better chance at winning, but with possibly the worst o-line in the NFL I'm not really sure how great those chances are to begin with. The Arizona game is winnable, so Bruce won't have to be perfect. Which is a good thing, because as much of grinder as he is, Bruce ain't perfect.

Get it together, you putz

Look, I'm not going to sit here and tell you Tom Cable has any business being an NFL head coach. He got his job by kissing Al's ass and allegedly being an offensive line genius. After half a season of being forced to start JaMarcus at QB, he managed to keep his job by claiming he had the support of the players. Now, with a new, somewhat competent QB in place, Tom Cable is out of excuses. So with his back against the wall, you'd figure he'd be doing everything in his power to keep his job. Apparently ol' Walrus Face has decided the safest course to job security is continue to put together shitty offensive lines that will get his QBs killed. This is the one area he allegedly has expertise in, and yet he apparently sucks at it. I've made my feelings on Mario Henderson known, so I'll set my sights on the rest of his equally over matched cohorts.

Robert Gallery was an absolute waste of a draft pick. He completely failed as a left tackle and was moved to right tackle, where he also failed. As a last resort, Rob was moved to left guard where he has been the very definition of average. Not good. Not bad. Just average. Robert Gallery is a league average NFL left guard, and he is the BEST lineman the Raiders have. To compound the issue, he's hurt. The line is subpar with him. You can best believe they are worse without him.

The Jared Veldheer/Samson Satele two headed monster of suck is in full effect at center. After trading for Satele at the end of training camp last year, the Raiders watched him get pushed around for a while before he ended up getting hurt. Veldheer is a rookie who is green as a gourd. He also stands 6'8, which is not really optimal when you have a quarterback lined up behind him trying to see over him. So our options are an undersized, soft Samoan (talk about your oxymorons) and a huge, overwhelmed rookie. Getting worse.

Cooper Carlisle is the crafty veteran of the group. Of course, he's also really bad at football, so I'm not really sure what purpose he serves. He's good for a false start and a hold each week, not to mention failing as a pass blocker. He's not much better as a run blocker, which is why the Raiders tend to run to left side of the line, which isn't looking good due to Gallery's injury.

Langston Walker is in his second stint with the Raiders. His first go around consisted mostly of him jumping before the snap and a shower of yellow flags. So why exactly do they keep him around? In 2004 he blocked a last second field goal attempt against the Denver Broncos. Doing anything to make Mike Shanahan look bad will earn you "made man" status in Uncle Al's kingdom. Seriously, if Napoleon Kaufman walked into Al's office today, he'd be a starter on Sunday. Also keep this in mind this: Walker wasn't good enough to play for the Buffalo Bills.

So, this is the collection of trash that Cable has assembled. THESE ARE HIS GUYS. And now he's all up in arms because this pool of obese turnstiles he's put together can't keep his quarterback standing up. Really, Tommy? You're shocked, nay, OUTRAGED that these tubs of guts can't block? Really? There are no real in-house replacements at the moment. Rookie Bruce Campbell isn't going to be ready to contribute any time soon. Khalif Barnes is better than Henderson, Cooper and Walker, yet he seems to be the invisible man in Cable's world. Daniel Looper hardly played in the pre season, and yet he probably will find himself replacing Gallery this week against the Rams. Erik Pears is a lump of crap who makes Walker look agile by comparison. So when January rolls around and the Raiders are looking at another wasted season, Cable won't have JaMarcus around to pin the blame on. It'll all fall on his shoulders, and he'll find himself unemployed.

Stupid Mario

I have been a Mario Henderson apologist for most of the last 12 months. In that span of time I have offered up the following excuses for his horrible play at left tackle: "He's better than Kwame Harris." "If you throw out the game where Orakpo got 4 sacks against him, he had a fairly decent year." "He's better than Barry Sims." "I didn't hear his name called, so that must be a good sign." "It's not his fault JaMarcus is a retard." "It's not his fault Gradkowski's bones are made out of balsa wood." "It's not his fault that Charlie Frye is incapable of breaking out of the grasp of 5 men." The truth is, Mario Henderson sucks and just *might* be the worst starting left tackle in the NFL. In spite of Mario's inability to protect the QB, Tom Cable has the steaming undies for him. Of course, Tom Cable is the same genius who thinks that Cooper Carlisle is a good option at right guard and starting a 6'7 rookie tackle who basically played at a community college at center is wise idea. Is it Mario's fault that Chris Johnson single handedly outscored the Raiders? No. Is it his fault that Jason Campbell has bad pocket awareness? No, but it IS his fault that the pocket collapsed every single time Jason dropped back to pass. He is slow footed, and, quite possibly, mentally deficient. As Sandra Bullock taught us, you don't have to be a card carrying member of MENSA to play o-line in the NFL. You just have to be big, strong and fast. Well, Mario has big and strong down pat, it's the whole foot speed thing that continues to elude him. He isn't going to get any better, and it's time for the Raiders to try something else. Anything else. Except Kwame Harris.

On the brink of... something

I am laying here in bed, trying to figure out why in the hell I'm so excited for tomorrow. Opening day has meant very little to us Raider fans for much of the last decade. I watched Rich Gannon limp noodle arm eventually fall apart. I watched Aaron Brooks, Kerry Collins, Josh McKown and Daunte Culpepper all crap the bed. JaMarcus Russell waddled around and threw the ball to no one in particular for a few seasons. Crammed in the middle somewhere, there was even a brief Rick Mirer era. Rob Johnson even made a run in. And now Jason Campbell is going to try his hand at running a really suspect Raider offense. Is he any more likely to succeed where the previously mentioned QBs failed? Probably not. Outside of Zack Miller, he has no proven, reliable target to throw to. The right side of the offensive line is a joke. Neither one of the two alleged starting tailbacks can stay healthy. And yet, for reasons I cannot explain, I want to believe in this cat. This is probably how a battered spouse feels. You know in your heart and your mind that they're going to hurt you again. You have a list of thousands of reasons to not believe in them. You have your bags packed, and you're ready to walk away for good, and then they tell you what you want to hear. You drop your bags and you run to them, wrapping your arms around them. You forgive, and for a brief time you even manage to forget. Things look they're turning around. They're holding down a steady job, trying to make things right. But we all know the end to this story. Just when you tell everyone at Christmas dinner about how much progress they've made, they show up drunk and knock over the Christmas tree. I say this same thing every single year, and yet when opening day comes around I somehow talk myself into thinking they might not actually make me hate football this time. So for the next 17 weeks I'm sure I will experience dizzying highs and devastating lows, and I'll love every second of it because I probably won't be able to go through this next season. If the players and owners really are stupid enough to call the golden goose it will be the dumbest move in the history of pro sports. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there. For now I choose to believe that this offensively inept team is somehow going to win 10 games. Football, everyone. Football.

The Assassin Goes to Valhalla

Fuck you, diabetes. It's bad enough that you killed Waylon Jennings, now you've taken Jack Tatum. A man so brutal, so remorseless that he made a career out of using his body as a guided missile. Countless times he folded opposing receivers up into wadded balls of skin and pads, only to walk away without so much as a scratch. Spines severed. Brains bruised. Teeth swallowed. Tatum left a trail of broken bodies in his wake, and yet it wasn't the violent nature of his career that did him in. It was the god damned 'beetus. How in the HELL can a man live through a decade plus worth of high speed car wrecks only to die from a disease Wilford Brimley seems to have whipped? I am asking you all to look into your hearts and help us fight this disease. Contribute to whatever group it is that's looking for a cure for diabetes. Wear whatever color rubber bracelet it is that stands for diabetes awareness. Make a quilt. Try actually cheering for Jay Cutler for once. Start a petition to get the name of the disease changed to Jack Tatum's Disease. Do your part to make this world a better place.

Kicking a man when he's down...

My parents raised me under the mantra that every single man, woman and child on Earth have an inherent value, no matter how evil/stupid/ugly/retarded they may be. Every human life is worth something to someone, so I am to respect and treat them accordingly. Well, my folks told me this long before a fat fuck named Jamarcus Russell waddled onto the face of the Earth. No offense, mom and dad, but you two don't know shit. Jamarcus Russell is worthless. Maybe not monetarily, well, not yet anyway. At the very least, once his last dollar is spent on a McChicken he can sell himself into service as a beast of burden in a less civilized nation such as Canada. Upon his death his skin can be harvested and transformed into a tent city, providing shelter to dozens of homeless people. It will in all likelihood be the only act of benevolence his fat ass will ever provide. Literally. So now that Jamarcus stands to lose everything, I am faced with the decision of being content at watching his life crumble or kicking him square in his fat ass while he's down. Taking the high road or the low road.

I'm taking the low road.

So, turns out that Grimmace was guzzling purple drank during his Raiders tenure. No shocker there. I mean, he was slow, lethargic and disinterested. This revelation should come to the surprise of no one. What IS surprising is the fact that apparently no one in the Raiders front office knew anything about it. Oh, the players knew about it. The coaching staff knew about it. Somehow, none of Al's piss boys, yes men or wet nurses were clued in. This is astonishing because there was a point in time where Al knew precisely which players were on which drugs. He knew how many dead whores Matuzek buried on a given weekend. He knew how many pending paternity suits Stabler was facing. He knew the ages of each under aged girl Fred Williamson ravaged during the season. He didn't earn the nickname "The Hammer" for his carpentry skills. Al has slipped. As if the last 7 seasons weren't ample proof of that, Jamarcus just makes it more obvious.

It's amazing to me that none of Russell's hanger-ons told him that keeping gallons of illegally obtained cough syrup in his crib was a bad idea. You figure that out of the dozens of parasites sucking off of his soft, chocolate nipples that maybe one of them would have the foresight to mention to him that maybe they ought to keep that shit at someone else's place. You know, in case the pigs show up. I'm fairly certain this is something they go over in great detail at the NFL's Rookie Symposium. You'd also think that perhaps someone in his crew would've also told his stupid ass to cop a plea bargain instead of claiming he's innocent. The best part is his lawyer requesting a speedy trial so Jamarcus can get ready for the season. Yeah, he actually said that to the judge. Even in unemployment, Jamarcus is still a shining beacon of unaccountability.

I really, REALLY hope Jamarcus goes to jail. I also hope that while he's incarcerated he gets raped and stabbed repeatedly by Raider fans. Let's face it, there's at least a few of us in every prison and jail in North America. I also hope that while he's in jail his house burns down and the feds seize his money and assets. His stupid bitch mother deserves to be homeless and penniless for raising a mong son with a crippling case of self entitlement. I hope all of his friends who cling to him end up piss broke too. Their constant feeding of his ego helped create this monster. I know it's bad to wish ill on another human being, but Jamarcus can barely be classified as human. Judge me if you must.

YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE THE CHOSEN ONE!

I will never forget where I was at 1:30pm PST on May 6th, 2010. I was enjoying lunch at the historic Duke's Malibu, looking at out at the ocean, watching dolphins frolic and surfers eat shit hard. I was surrounded by friends and family and was enjoying a lovely vacation. As I looked around the table I couldn't help but think that this might well be as good as things could possibly get. Then, all at once, they got better. A whole helluva lot better. I received a text message. Then a second. Then 3 more. In the span of 30 seconds I received close to 3 dozen text messages. I was puzzled, and admittedly a tiny bit worried. Had we been attacked by terrorists? Did Canada finally invade? Had we been sold to the Chinese? I clicked on the first one, which was from a friend and fellow Raider fan. All it said was WOOOOOHOOOOOO! The next one was from a friend who never misses a chance to mock me for rooting for a shitty team. It said "hey maybe now you guys might compete." What in the hell was going on? The third, and most coherent, was from my cousin who is also a Raider fan. It read "HOLY SHIT, DUDE! JAMARCUS IS GONE!!!! LOL!!" My phone slipped out of my hand and fell to the ground. I stood up in the middle of this fine dining establishment and at the top of my lungs I screamed out "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! JAMARCUS IS GONNNNNNNNNNNNE!" I grabbed my wife and planted a huge kiss on her and then picked my two daughters up out of their chairs and began to jump up and down, laughing and (yes, I'll admit it) crying tears of joy. My family and friends all knew exactly what I was talking about. How could they not, after hearing me bitch about his worthless ass non stop for the last 2 years. After composing myself I ordered an $120 bottle of some French wine that I couldn't pronounce and toasted to a new start for my beloved Raiders. A new start that now, finally, was a possibility.

I didn't always have this much hatred for Jamarcus. When he was drafted I knew it wouldn't work out. I knew he wasn't good enough to warrant being the #1 overall pick. I knew Calvin Johnson was going to be much, much better than him. I knew Joe Thomas was going to be much, much better than him. Ditto for Adrian Peterson, Patrick Willis and Darrelle Revis. Despite this, I held out hope that maybe, just maybe, Jamarcus would wind up being a good, solid QB. But I knew he'd never be a star. I was willing to give him a chance. Then he decided to holdout and miss all of training camp and the 1st game of the season. That eliminated any chance of him having any sort of an impact his rookie year. Then when he finally did sign he was fat. Really, really fat. Then the rumors about his work ethic started to get louder and louder. He sleeps during meetings and film sessions. He needs someone to wake him up on the road in time to get on the team bus. In spite of all of this, I had to believe he'd turn it around at some point. It was certainly too soon to call him a bust, right?

Then came season #2. He had his ups and his downs. He nearly beat the Bills on the road. He ended up being the knockout blow for the coaching tenures of Mike Shanahan and Jon Gruden. He fumbled a lot. He threw some picks. But he showed some skills. Maybe not Pro Bowl talent, but there was something there. Something he could build on.

Then came season #3. He came into camp fat again. And not "beginning of training camp" type of fat. We're talking "circus fat". His work ethic somehow got worse. He refused to accept any blame for the team losing, despite not being able to complete a pass if his life depended on it. He got sacked repeatedly by holding onto the ball. There were more fumbles. More picks. And now there were no ups. Just downs. Things got so bad that career journeyman Bruce Gradkowski actually looked competent by comparison. The team actually was so relieved that Jamarcus was sent to the bench that they rallied around a guy who was as average as average can be. And yet he still sat there on the bench, smiling wearing his huge diamond earrings and beanie. Smiling that same smug, arrogant fucking grin that his bloated ass has flashed time and time again the last 3 years as he went out onto the field and threw the ball to no one in particular. That same fucking smile he'd show off every time he'd fumble the ball away and shrug as the defense picked the ball up and ran it in for a score. "NOT MY FAULT" was written all over his fat fucking face and it MADE. ME. SICK. Sick to bottom of my ulcer filled stomach. Sick to the point that I wanted desperately for the o-line to just allow the defensive line to crush his goddamned ass into bits and pieces. I now hated Jamarcus. I hated him more than anything I have ever hated. More than I hated cancer. More than I hated Glenn Beck. More than I hated Fred Durst. Jamarcus was now the most reviled thing in my universe. And through it all he kept on smiling and cashing those ridiculous paychecks. Keep on smiling, you fucking asshole. Keep smiling 3 years from now when you've spent all your NFL money and you're on the Surreal Life. Keep smiling when you're working as a blackjack dealer on a river gambling boat. Keep smiling when 5 years from now when ESPN, as part of their "35 for 35" series films A $39,000,000 Dream Deferred: The Jamarcus Russell Story and shows your worthless ass living under a freeway overpass, sucking dick for money. I want all of these terrible things to happen to you. All of them, and more. You deserve this. You actually deserve to live the most horrible, tragic life imaginable. Not because you sucked at football. Not because you drove my team, MY beloved team, into the goddamned abyss. I want your life to be utter shit because you did all of this and it didn't faze you in the slightest bit. You were a fucking $39,000,000.00 disaster and you DIDN'T FUCKING CARE. You didn't have enough professionalism to put in the time it takes to be a true pro. You didn't even have enough common sense or even the slightest flickering of personal pride to not be an embarrassment. Your momma and grandma raised you up to not listen to anyone who tells you things you don't want to hear. And now look where it has gotten you. You're a joke. Not even a particularly funny joke. Fuck you Jamarcus. Eat shit. Burn in hell. I hope you become homeless. As I slam the door shut on the large shit stain that was Jamarcus, I invite you to watch his most memorable moment as a Raider. Alahu akbar.