RaiderDamus' Friday Foretelling: Raiders vs. Packers

Greetings, Raider fans! It is I, Raiderdamus, the sultan of seers, the poobah of prognostication, and the World's Freshest Man. I come to you today pleased with the Raiders' Herculean effort in Denver in the rarified air. While I did not predict a Raider win (and neither did anyone else with any sense) I am happy to be wrong, as I am happy any time the Broncos lose in embarrassing fashion and set their franchise back a few notches.

But this week we move on to hosting the NFL's darling Green Bay Packers. Green Bay is a unique market in that it's really a teeny, tiny little Midwestern town and not a booming metropolis like the rest of the cities that host NFL teams. Raiderdamus himself lives in a pathetically small, insignificant town in Outer Montana and I imagine it's a lot like Green Bay if we replaced the Rocky Mountains with a giant, old, obnoxious circlejerk of a football stadium that's in the middle of town for no reason. Also, we have restaurants that are better than Applebee's.

For any of my new readers who happen to be Green Bay Packer fans, what I do here is prognosticate (that means I predict the future). I do this by summoning up the Great Beyond, and he tells us all we need to know about the upcoming game. So sit back, buckle up, and listen to what the Great Old One has to say:

"You actually won in Denver! I for one am shocked. After that first half I was sure that I was right on target, but them Brock Osweiler proved that he has the likeness, mobility, and football acumen of a Douglas Fir. The Broncos may want to look into finding the Fountain of Youth for Peyton Manning, because I'm pretty sure Osweiler now has PTSD from Khalil Mack terrorizing him in the second half and he may want to invest in some plastic bedsheets. Khalil Mack will be doing this for the next ten years to whatever poor scrub the other AFC West teams decide to sacrifice to him. I would say that Mack reminds me of Lawrence Taylor, but I happen to know you're playing the Packers this week and so I'll say Mack reminds me of Julius Peppers back when the Packer fans hated him.

Why, I remember the last time the Packers came into Oakland. Brett Favre's father had just passed away and the Packers obliterated the Raiders by a score which I can't remember at the moment, but we'll say it was 85-3. One can only assume that Favre was able to battle through his melancholy by crunching down pain pills like he was running from zombies in the Left 4 Dead game.

For good measure, here is a picture I uncovered of Brett Favre's cat.

You can say a lot of things about Packer fans (and I will), but we can start with their delusional nature. I remember hearing an anecdote that amused me to no end many years ago. Green Bay had a town hall meeting about cooperation or teamwork or some such horseshit. I imagine the government of the town wanted to "work together" with the public toward some asinine goal by raising their taxes. This numbnuts politician gets up in front of the Green Bay crowd and asks them, "How many passes could Brett Favre complete without an offensive line?" and this mouthbreather in the back of the room yells out "ALL OF THEM!" and everybody laughed. I hope that politician retired the next day, because his career was over regardless.

The people of Green Bay are intensely proud of their team, because they are really the only small town that has one and they all have these worthless little pieces of paper that say they own part of the Packers. Technically they do, in the same way that any taxpayer in a large city owns part of a publicly funded stadium, or the way that putting on Paul Stanley makeup makes you a lieutenant colonel in the KISS Army. But when a Packers fan drunkenly yells "Fahr Don Caporsh!" after the Packers blow another double digit lead in the fourth quarter, they unlike any other team's fans carry the delusion that it might actually happen. I assure you, Packer fans, Dom Capers is going to be your defensive coodinator until the end of time and things will never, ever get better.

Why does Green Bay even have a team? They are in Wisconsin, a state best known for not supporting the Bucks and being shaped like a mitten, and not an actual looking mitten like Michigan. They look like a mitten that might be worn by Danny Devito as The Penguin in Batman Returns.

Coincidentally, this is what most Packer fans look like. The men are even worse.

The Packers' real saving grace is that they have a national fanbase, much like the Raiders. There are Packer fans everywhere, like fat racist termites in a redwood forest. It's better that these people live outside of Wisconsin, because nobody can go to a Packer game unless they have season tickets. The waiting list for Packers season tickets is longer than the waiting list for donor livers in the United States. If we forcibly removed the livers of every Packer season ticket holder before they contracted their inevitable case of cirrhosis, we could solve both problems at once.

The following is a picture of a Smart Car that was seen in Orlando, Florida. We know it was not in Wisconsin because no Packers fan from Green Bay could fit in this car.

These are the sort of people we are dealing with. It's hard to see from this picture, but from other pictures of this car I happen to know the writing on the back bumper is the email address of the car's owner. This address is packrbakr@aol.com. Do not harass this person as I am sure they have heard all the jokes and seen all the Brett Favre dick pics. However, if "@aol.com" isn't the most Packers thing of all time I sure don't know what is. Not only does this person have AOL, they have also placed a large wedge of cheese on the roof of their car, as if the seagulls in Florida weren't enough of a nuisance.

Eventually, the Packers moved on from Brett Favre. He moved on to harassing women in New York and freezing his nuts off in Minnesota. He didn't bother sending any nasty texts as a Viking because mosquitoes do not have cell phones. Luckily for the Packers, unlike most teams they didn't have to scramble for a quarterback and either start a deer-in-the-headlights rookie or a crappy washed-up veteran. No no, they had some foresight and they selected this man in 2005, apparently convinced by his superlative performance in the East-West Bowl:

Rodgers really outdueled D'Quez Poopsie in that game, completing a number of long passes to Fudge. The former Cal Bear quarterback has been at the top of his game as a professional, becoming arguably the best quarterback in football, non-Tom Brady division. He has been so good, he inspired this rollicking tune here:

Eddy J. Lemberger is the Green Bayest man alive. He combines the Germanic last name of Lemburger (curiously close to a species of cheese) with the sliminess of a Long Island pawnbroker. If you should ever need Packers tickets, I am sure Eddy knows a guy who knows a guy, ha ha, knowhaymsayin?

Take Aaron Rodgers away from the Packers, and they are a six-win team with a bad defense and Mike McCarthy gets fired four years ago. Take the Packers away from Green Bay, and they are Racine, a city best known for having a women's baseball team during World War Two that beat the Rockford Peaches and it made everyone sad.

Taking Rodgers away from the Packers will be the sole focus of one man this Sunday, Khalil Mack. He will be on a mission to ensure that Rodgers spends the lion's share of this game on the sidelines with smelling salts under his nostrils. Should this happen, the Packers ought to go to Eddy Lacy often, but the Packer fans in attendance will probably just chant "KUUUUUHN" until Mike McCarthy bows to peer pressure and calls fifteen consecutive fullback dives. Mike McCarthy knows he has but one purpose in life, and that's to turn the Green Bay Packers into pre-1970 Notre Dame.

Notre Dame fans and Packer fans have a lot in common. It used to be that if a Notre Dame player won the Heisman, the Packers would automatically be awarded him in the draft according to NFL bylaws. I'm still not sure how the Raiders got Tim Brown, but maybe someone wasn't paying attention that day. Notre Dame fans and Packer fans love white fullbacks, running the damn football, and discipline. If you thought South Bend was a mecca of fart-sniffing football wankery with its head so far up its own ass it can smell its tonsils, wait til you go to Lambeau Field and walk around their Packers Hall of Fame, a place so pretentious it makes the Raiders lighting Al Davis' Eternal Flame look like Fidel Castro pissing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The main difference between Notre Dame fans and Packer fans is that Notre Dame fans 1) went to a major university and 2) drink wine, whereas Packer fans went to Everest College and drink New Glarus Spotted Cow. This is their reward to themselves for not having gone to Notre Dame and not having had to sit through Father O'Callahan's Pederasty 101 lecture.

One day, probably Sunday, Aaron Rodgers will be seriously hurt and the Packers will not be able to survive it. For evidence of this, I implore you to pay attention to what happens next to the Cincinnati Bengals. The Packers will sour on McCarthy's gimmick, which is "take credit for whatever Aaron Rodgers does" and will fire him. There will be a Town Council meeting and the good citizens of Green Bay will decide as co-owners who to hire in his place. Packers GM Ted Thompson will climb the dais and pose the question to the bustling throng, asking who they want. "Bret Bielema!" some will cry. "Gary Andersen!" say others, who did not watch any Oregon State Beavers games this year. "BARRY ALVAREZ!" the crowd will begin to chant in unison, as Barabbas is released and Christ is sentenced to death.

Barry Alvarez will be named Packers head coach much to his surprise, as he is currently the dictator of the University of Wisconsin, a place where he developed exactly zero quarterbacks (his crowning achievement is Jim Sorgi) and as athletic director lucked into one season of Russell Wilson. Packer fans will be beside themselves with joy, as John Kuhn will finally get the touches he so richly deserves.

In this game, the Packers will try and fail to get a pass rush on Derek Carr. Their secondary will try and fail to cover Amari Cooper, who will be on a mission after catching zero of eight targets against the Broncos. They will not have much issue passing on the Raiders secondary, and tight end Richard Rodgers will probably have a huge day. Khalil Mack will be wondering why the Packers didn't try harder to keep him out of the backfield, but the fact is that with tight ends left in to protect Aaron Rodgers, John Kuhn is the only real target available. Mack will endeavor to put Rodgers on his back, discount double-checking what his own name is.

This game will be a close and hard fought one, and it will probably come down to which team gets the ball last. The Packers are a notoriously lucky team (see: Brett Favre's career) and will probably have the ball last. Hey, it worked against the Lions. Once.

Packers win, 28-27."