Raiderdamus' Wednesday Foretelling: Raiders vs. Chefs

Greetings, Raider Nation! It is I, the man on the scene, who can give you what you want but you got to come home with me, Raiderdamus the Great and Powerful. It is not often that our beloved Raiders play on Thursday, but when they do the Great Raiderdamus releases an early edition of the Foretelling, wherein I bother the Great Beyond a little earlier in the week than I normally do.

If you've been following along at home, you'll know that Raiderdamus predicted a final score of 36-24 against the Bills, only to be betrayed at the last moment by a Seth Roberts two-point conversion which put the game at 38-24. Such is life. Still, Raiderdamus is the greatest of all time, and haters better recognize.

But I owe all my accuracy to the Big Guy in the Sky, the Great Old One, known to all of us here as the Great Beyond. I have once again made contact with him to consult his wisdom concerning the game on Thursday night. Here is the message I was given:

"Once again, you all gave up hope! Many of you cursed the sky, or turned off the television, or drunk yourself into a stupor. But I said the Raiders would win, and win they did. There is nothing to fear except fear itself, but you pantywaists curl up into a tiny ball at the first sign of adversity. Shame!

If you'll recall, the first time the Raiders played the Chiefs I said this:

'The Raiders' luck will run out, if only for one week.' And I told you the Raiders would lose. And I was right. Do you know what else I was right about? It was only for that week. Oakland literally has not lost a football game since that one. The Chefs, damn them to an eternity of torment watching Marty Schottenheimer try to program his VCR, have only lost one more game than the Raiders and seem intent on fucking up what is undoubtedly the best story in football, the resurgence of the mighty Silver and Black.

The reason everybody hates the Chiefs is because they are boring. The reason they're boring is that they are designed that way. They take the most average or underperforming castoff quarterbacks from around the league wherever and however they can get them, and hire the most conservative coaches with the worst clock management they can muster, especially ones who choke in the playoffs. Not since the great Hank Stram himself have the Chefs employed a coach with any balls, who would go for the throat when it was necessary. For the last 45 years the Kansas City Chiefs have essentially employed potato salad as their head coach.

Potato salad is fine to most people. It will get the job done, and it's hard to mess up. But it's not exciting. It won't steal the show. You cannot take risks with potato salad. It's the John Cena of the food world.

People like John Cena. He's the guy you put in the main event to ensure it maintains a certain quality. But John Cena isn't going to set anybody on fire. He won't powerbomb anybody onto a bed of nails. He's not going to throw anyone off the top of Hell in a Cell. He's exactly what Kansas City has been for the last 45 years.

In Kansas City, people like to go to work during the week and come home to fall asleep in front of NCIS. They go to church on Sundays, come home and eat some brisket, and watch the Chefs win 16-9 over some lame-ass NFC South team nobody cares about. Some of them deal meth in the traditional, old-fashioned way as their ancestors did. It is a provincial existence. It is the reason the villagers grabbed their pitchforks and torches to kill the Beast when Gaston revealed him in the magic mirror. They will protect this peaceful non-threatening way of life at all costs.

And that means they don't hire any coach who engages in that Air Raid fuckery from out West, or sign a quarterback who has an arm bigger than Elvis Grbac's. They win with defense, running the football, and dumb luck, just the way football was designed to be played. A Chiefs game is a great way to take a peek at what football was like prior to the invention of the forward pass.

The Chiefs play football the way America fought the Vietnam War. To Kansas City, football is a game of attrition, and they hope you give up before they do. Instead of commentators, "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival should be played in the background of all Chiefs games as Derrick Johnson shoots farmers from the side of a helicopter.

The Chiefs don't like fun or excitement of any kind. Here's a joke for you.

Q: Why don't Chiefs fans have sex standing up?

A: Because it could lead to dancing.

Naturally, the Chiefs prefer to address other needs in the first rounds of drafts besides the one position which could actually make them a dangerous team- quarterback. The last time they took a quarterback in the first round was the greatest quarterback draft of all time, 1983. Quarterbacks available in that draft included John Elway, Jim Kelly, Dan Marino, Tony Eason and Ken O'Brien. The Chiefs could have had any of them except Elway, and they probably could have had him for the right deal from the Colts.

Who did the Chiefs actually draft? This guy:

Holy shit, Todd. That's the most offensive thing I've ever read, and I'm including the liner notes to Cannibal Corpse albums.

The really fun part of Todd Blackledge is that if you were born at any point between 1986 and 1991, by the time you started following sports on television, Todd Blackledge was just the guy on ESPN who did college football. They never talked about him playing for the Chefs. They didn't discuss him being a first round pick. He was such a bust as a pro that he was virtually erased from history and repackaged as something else, like a censor from the book 1984 went back into all the media and changed the story of his life. Todd Blackledge is Newspeak in human form. We are at peace with Miami. We have always been at war with Kansas City.

Being a Chiefs fan is like being a fan of the Brooklyn Nets. You might reach the playoffs now and then, but you're going to get bounced in the first round. You may have a promising rookie once in a while, or an exciting free agent signing, but for the most part it's rooting for players well past their prime and endless soul-crushing mediocrity, year after year. But there's one man who has done everything possible to be a Chief, and that's Andy Reid.

Follow me on this, guys. Andy Reid started out his career with the Green Bay Packers in the Favre Era, working under Mike Holmgren. Reid was clearly hired as a body double to Holmgren in the event of Mike's untimely death to a massive heart attack. It was here that Reid developed his taste for cheese and meat. Green Bay's cheese culture is unparalleled. But Reid wanted more. He wanted meat, on a sandwich, covered in cheese. And he knew just where to get it.

Here is Reid, clearly at a press conference talking to a bunch of media losers who weigh half as much as Andy does and want to be Tim Kawakami when they grow up and move out of grandma's basement. Does this appear to be the look of a man who wants to be answering questions about the West Coast Offense? Hell no. This look screams "If I do not get a cheesesteak in the next twenty minutes I am going to eat all of you Poindexter reporters for lunch." Reid clearly has that moustache so that he can save some bits of cheese for a late-night snacking experience. But Andy was eventually ready for a new culinary delight.

Reid was ready for Kansas City barbecue. He did not go to Carolina or Houston or Tennessee, even though he probably could have. He went to KC. Not only does he get all the prostitutes covered in Bull's-Eye K.C. Masterpiece sauce he can handle as part of his contract, but he also travels to Oakland once a year and has an assistant bring him all the tailgate food he can shovel down his gullet in the hours prior to the game.

Andy Reid does not love you, Missouri. He is using you to get what he really loves. Having reached the pinnacle of American food culture, Reid will now go full Jeff Fisher for perpetuity, winning just enough games not to get fired so he can have those delicious burnt ends and chopped pork forever. Look at that picture. That is the look of a man who is at home.

It's up to the Raiders to make sure Reid doesn't get to stay at home. If the Raiders win this game, there's a very good chance the Chefs could play all one of their playoff games this season on the road. With two weeks to prepare, Andy Reid is a coaching god. But with three days? He's more like this:

Raiders win, 29-27."