Raiderdamus' Friday Foretelling: Raiders vs. Broncos

Greetings, Raider fans! It is I, the man for whom there is no Off position on the Genius Switch, Raiderdamus the Great and Powerful. Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends. We're so glad you could attend. Come inside, come inside.

This week, the Raiders will take on their Most Hated Rival, the Denver Broncos, on Sunday Night Football in front of the entire nation because the World Series is now over. Congratulations to all the Cubs fans, but I'd like to remind you that the Bears will never win a Super Bowl again, so cry into your Bud Light while you listen to that ridiculous "Go Cubs Go" song on repeat until the first week of April. The city of Chicago will likely take all the extra revenue from the Cubs' playoff home games and give it to the Bears so they can sign Jay Cutler to a forty-year extension.

Now that I've thrown shade at Chicago, let's move on to Denver. I have plenty to say about Denver, but I'm not going to say any of it. I'm going to let the Great Beyond say it all for me. Without any further shenanigans, prostrate yourselves and hearken to the words of the Big Guy in the Sky:

"Well hello there! What a game that was last week in Tampa. The Raiders scored 30 points and won, just like I predicted they would. Yet another feather in my cap. So who you got this week? Eh? The Broncos? Hoo boy. Another one of these. Well, here we go.

Watching an exciting and dramatic football season where the Broncos win the Super Bowl is like meeting a gorgeous girl at a bar, taking her home, and waking up the next morning to discover that she was your seventh-grade English teacher. It's like dying and going to Coca-Cola Heaven, walking into the Coke Diner, sitting in a red leather booth, reading from the Coke Menu, ordering the steak fajitas and a Coke, and having your waitress ask you, "Is Pepsi okay?"

It is not okay. The Denver Broncos winning anything other than the Gonorrhea Olympics is not okay. What really pisses me off is that Denver has gotten noticeably worse on offense and still isn't losing games. Being worse on the offensive side of the ball is hard to do, especially when last year they had Peyton Manning with cerebral palsy under center throwing the ball to exactly one receiver who gave a damn. That's Emmanuel Sanders for those of you keeping score at home, and he's great so I'll leave him alone.

Denver's drafting of Paxton Lynch in the first round was a desperate attempt to cover up the fact that Denver had exhibited an appalling lack of forethought and preparation for when Manning finally moved on to the Great Papa John's Commercial in the Sky.

To be fair, they had done some preparation in the form of getting Brock Osweiler slaughtered behind their pathetic offensive line. Brock, of course, decided he'd had his fill of Denver and went to go stink up the joint in Houston, where he may go down as the worst free-agent signing in Texans history (and this is a team that gave Tony Boselli a zillion dollars to never play for them). Brock was right to leave and Denver was right to let him go.

So Denver had two quarterbacks on their roster: Big Ten failure and Noted Running Quarterback Trevor Siemien and rookie Packin' Lunch. So John Elway, not happy with his choices here, reached into his bag of tricks and pulled out the man, the myth, the legend, Mark Sanchez. Only John Elway has enough street cred in the city of Denver to present Mark Sanchez as a viable solution to his team's problems and have people say, "Oh. Yeah, that will probably work."

Well, it didn't, because Sanchez sucks, and anyone who has ever watched him play could have told you that. But the Broncos love trying to turn dog crap into gold, as evidenced by their turning Mike Anderson and Olandis Gary into 1000-yard rushers and top-round fantasy picks. Denver can do this because what their offensive linemen lack in talent, they make up in the ability to cut block like a bunch of bitches.

Yeah, all y'all can go straight to hell.

Denver's issues at quarterback thus far haven't come around to hurt them yet, because their schedule has been pillow-soft. The only good team they've played, Atlanta, beat them fairly soundly. They lost to the Chargers. The Patriots will kill them. The Chiefs will probably beat them twice.

But this does show a long-standing problem with Denver, in their total inability to develop a quarterback. Since John Elway retired, the Broncos have had the likes of Jake Plummer, Kyle Orton, Brian Griese and Jay Cutler start for them. Griese was garbage, Orton was developed by the Bears and regressed in Denver, and Cutler was so mediocre they traded him AND his best wide receiver to the Bears for three magic beans. In fact, the only quarterback the Broncos have developed in recent years is this man:

Say what you like about Tim Tebow, the man sold jerseys and he beat the Steelers in the playoffs so that makes him a success in my book.

Trevor Siemien is an implosion waiting to happen. He wasn't any good at Northwestern and he isn't any good now. He is like a mail-order bride from the Ukraine- he seems like a good idea until you get him home and discover he doesn't speak English, he tries to do laundry in the sink and has a mouth fungus we don't even have a cure for in this country.

The Broncos haven't really done him any favors, either. They replaced LT Ryan Clady with Russell Okung, who isn't nearly as good and is acting as his own agent. Wow, Okung negotiating a deal with the man who refused to pay Brock Osweiler an extra $3 million a year? I'm shocked these negotiations didn't result in Denver shipping nuclear weapons to Iran.

The problem with the Broncos' quarterback situation lately is that it's brought on a flood of bandwagon fans. Every Evangelical Christian in America was a Tim Tebow fan and ditched the Broncos as soon as they let Tebow go. When the team brought in Peyton Manning, they got all his fans too, and those people are all wearing Dak Prescott jerseys now. The Broncos have about sixteen actual fans left, and one of them is the frozen corpse of Barrel Man, who cannot be moved because his bare ass is stuck to his stadium seat. These people know so little about football, they think Wade Phillips is directions for crossing the Colorado River.

The Broncos have had an opportunistic running game this season, but CJ Anderson just tore his thorax or something and rookie Devontae Booker is now the starter. While he has shown flashes of being a solid player, Booker has had issues with ball security. Considering Bruce Irvin will be on the other side of the ball, the Broncos are gonna Booker themselves right on down to Fumble Town.

The Broncos like to think they're the new 1985 Bears. They're not. The Bears had Walter Payton, Willie Gault, and the greatest quarterback who ever lived, Jim McMahon. These Broncos have 2004 Browns talent running the 1991 Bills system.

For all you hoodlums our there who disagree with the commissioner's actions and want to protest, THIS is how you do it. You stick his name on your headband and troll his ass all the way to a Super Bowl win. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Richard Sherman. Blow it out your nose, Cam Newton. Be like Jim. Wear sunglasses, screw strippers, do massive amounts of cocaine, and write "GOODELL" on your equipment. That's the way you do it. Get your money for nothing and your chicks for free.

Anyway, as far as this game goes, it should be a slobberknocker. Both teams will come out swinging. I think the Raiders SHOULD win, but I don't think they will, because their lack of discipline will play into the hands of a tough defense that will likely outscore the Denver offense for the rest of the season. I wouldn't be shocked if Denver falls flat and the Raiders pounce on them and go up early, but playing keep-away won't work against the Denver defense, which hasn't missed a beat from last year.

Broncos 24, Raiders 21."