RaiderDamus' Friday Foretelling: Raiders vs. Browns

Greetings, Raider fans! It is I, RaiderDamus, the man with the plan, the fan of all fans, the tower of power too sweet to be sour. Last week the Great Beyond predicted another miserable loss for our beloved Raiders, but Oakland shocked the world and actually defeated the Ravens at home. The Raiders and Coach Jack Del Taco were able to make some killer halftime adjustments and Derek Carr led a fantastic game-winning two minute drill. It was a beautiful sight to behold. I do not mind the Big Guy in the Sky being wrong about that one.

But on to this week! Our heroes are forced to travel to Cleveland, which ought to be outlawed under the terms of the Geneva Convention, but we all know Roger Goodell cares little for the rule of law or basic human decency. Let's all gather around to hear what Mr. Beyond has to say about this week.

"Oh ho ho! It looks like fate did not quite turn out as I expected last week. The Raiders played a great game, almost as much as Baltimore played a bad one. They couldn't have defended themselves against a swarm of Beverly Hills chihuahuas last week, let alone the tag team of Crabtree and Cooper. People often ask me, "is Joe Flacco elite?" which is a funny question to ask of a powerful spiritual being when I could easily tell them about their love life or what career they should pursue, but most of the time it's Ravens fans asking me that and the answers are 1) your cousin does not count as a love interest and 2) you already have a lucrative meth dealing business so why switch now? As for Flacco, the answer is 'No he lost to the Raiders shut the hell up'.

This week you're playing the... Browns? Oh, come on. Last week I thoroughly lampooned the Ravens who used to be the Browns and I spent most of that time making fun of the STANK-ASS BROWNS. This week I have to do it again? A promise is a promise. Here goes.

There are three bad things about Ohio. They are:

1) The people.

2) The land.

3) The weather.

Firstly, the people. Ohio contains the largest grouping of fat, bland, drug-addled mouth-breathers this side of Tallahassee. Most of these people live in crappy old Rust Belt cities whose economy never recovered from the fiery death of the steel industry like Akron, Youngstown and Toledo. All of these towns contain major universities with Division 1 football programs, but nobody gives a shit because everyone in Ohio is this dickbag right here:

He is called Big Nut because he escapes the Ohio State Mental Hospital every Saturday in the fall to attend games and because he shot off one of his testicles in high school to impress a girl- probably the frumpy lass to the right. The picture does not show his feet because they have both been amputated.

Ohio is full of druggies, racists, diabetics and people who are depressed because they are too poor to live in Michigan. Sometimes, those are all the same person. Ohio does, however, have a lot of very fine institutions of higher learning that the citizens use to watch football games and NASA has a facility there. Ohio has a long and storied history of its citizens being involved in the space program.

Secondly, the land is awful. If you think Iowa is flat and boring, check out Ohio. It is utterly bereft of any interesting features and is full of corn and cement statues of corn. If you've been wondering why everything we drink and eat contains High Fructose Corn Syrup, it's because that's how you make corn taste good, and Ohio and Iowa hired a really good lobbyist after the embargo on Cuba. Ohio has no natural resources except for ore, and that used to be used to make steel before people realized that aluminum, titanium and plastic work much better for pretty much anything steel can do. Wake up, sheeple, jet fuel can't melt titanium beams. Once you move to Ohio, you quickly understand that the state has no economy to speak of outside of football and you can never afford to leave.

The landscape of Ohio does have its share of rivers and lakes, but they are all polluted and have been known to catch on fire. If your diet is deficient in mercury, eating a Lake Erie walleye is a great way to supplement your heavy metal intake.

Thirdly, the weather. The weather in Ohio is horseshit. People sometimes defend Ohio by saying, "You get all four seasons!" Sure, sometimes you get all four of them on the same day. You can never believe a weatherman in Ohio because nature is constantly trying to make Steve from Channel Six look like the biggest asshole in the Midwest. "You think it's going to be seventy degrees and sunny today, weather dweeb?" says Nature. "Here's some freezing rain and some very unsafe driving conditions! Let's hope the good people of Dayton don't slash your tires, dumbass."

The reason the weather is so bad is that Lake Erie is colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra and Ohio has no mountains to stop the cold from descending right down onto where these unfortunate degenerates have chosen to make their homes. In order to combat the bitter cold, the Ohio EPA has kept a steady rubber tire fire going outside of the city of Sycamore since 1977.

Since everyone in Ohio already has crippling diabetes, the emphysema resulting from the burning tires is really the least of their concerns.

But enough about Ohio, let's talk about the Browns. Before Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore, there were people trying to save the Browns, as if they were a thing worth saving. You'd think after 1987 or so, the people of Cleveland would have gotten the hint and given up. But they did not, and in 1999 the NFL in its infinite wisdom granted Cleveland another franchise that they could ruin. This franchise was again called the Browns, which is an insult to the very fine Browns teams of the 50's and 80's. This new franchise ought to have been given a new name, one honoring the history and character of the city of Cleveland, one pointing up the boating legacy on the Ohio River. The new team should have been called the Cleveland Steamers.

The first thing this new Browns franchise did was to draft a fine college quarterback in Kentucky's Tim Couch and completely ruin him by surrounding him with absolutely no talent or coaching whatsoever. Couch was eventually replaced by Sage Rosenfels, which is the kicker-est name of all time and in no way is a quarterback's name. Sage Rosenfels should be selling me patio furniture or a rescue dog, not leading the Browns further into the toilet.

The Browns have had no coaching continuity whatsoever, which sounds rich when coming from a Raiders website, but consider that the new Browns have had eight head coaches in their sixteen year history, whereas the old Browns had ten in fifty years. Mike Pettine seems like a decent enough guy, if I needed my oil changed or if there was a dangerous weapons dealer who needed his door busted in by a SWAT team at three in the morning.

"You say your franchise is worth about 1.5 billion dollars? The best I can do is sixty bucks and some store credit."

I feel bad for Mike Pettine though, because his job is to make the Browns not suck and then explain to a bunch of reporters why they still do.

And yet he still pulls dysfunctional crap like not starting Johnny Freaking Football who had a pretty good game against the Titans, and instead starting career backup and noted Raider failure Josh McClown.

Johnny actually might have been able to beat the Raiders. McCown will do just well enough to stay in the game, but not be good enough to win it. The Browns' run defense is atrocious and Latavius Murray will run all over, around and through them. The Browns have nobody remotely as good as Justin Forsett, they don't have a pass-catching tight end, and Travis Benjamin looks a lot like Steve Smith but is not actually him.

Raiders win, 27-16.