Everything Else Football

The Vault: Bye Week

By Tony Martin 1450 0

Welcome back to THE VAULT, where I revisit some of the best vintage games our beloved Bears have played against whatever team they match up against this week.

The Bears don’t have an opponent this weekend, but I’m trying so hard to make THE VAULT indispensable; think of me as Matt Nagy, and THE VAULT as Cordarrelle Patterson. THE VAULT KNOWS NO BYE WEEKS. I’m picturing Matt Nagy and Patterson this week in an otherwise empty Halas Hall, practicing 5 yard outs in the darkness.

So, let’s talk bye weeks. Bye weeks were brought to the NFL in 1990, supposedly to give players the chance to rest, but also to provide more TV revenue, since they were restructuring their contracts with the networks. Good to see how important player safety is, y’all.

What’s your Bye-Week tradition? I feel like what someone does on the Sunday their favorite team is off tells me more about someone’s fandom than what they do during the games themselves. So, pick your “My Team is Off This Week” trope from the guide below:

Family Time: You’ve been spending your Sundays on the couch, and your significant other is begging you to do all the fun fall stuff that you ignore every year. Go to the pumpkin patch, take the kids mini golfing, go to Bath and Body Works and smell all the candles for free? Do you, friend. Family time rules.

Fantasy Dork: You still park your ass on the couch and watch RedZone for SEVEN COMMERCIAL FREE HOURS, listening to Scott Hanson slowly lose his mind and get too excited to call a Raheem Mostert one yard touchdown during the late games because nobody has scored in 32 minutes of real time. Also, if anyone knows where I can find recordings of those tasty riffs they play while running highlights let me know. I’ll pay Hansonly.

Any Football is Cool: You’ll watch whatever national game is in your viewing network. I swear, it was football hell growing up and watching whatever game was on Fox while CBS showed the World Bull Riding Championships or whatever. Now that I’m an adult, I gladly pay extra to not have to spend my afternoons watching Minnesota play Detroit and hoping for James Brown to jump in and tell me the Dolphins are now down by 31.

The “Cultured Fan”: You watch playoff baseball, NBA games, shit you’ll even watch golf? You must hate your family.

The Space Cadet: You have spent so many Sundays (and Mondays… and Thursdays) ignoring your responsibilities, it’s time to catch up. Fuck football for a day, you haven’t caught up on your grading, or you haven’t played guitar in weeks, or your dog needs to get in some kickass dog park hangs before it gets too cold.

Helping Hand: Mow the lawn, clean the basement, prune the tree. Today is the day that you make up for all the stuff you’ve been forgetting to do on the list. It doesn’t have to be all bad, make it fun! Walk around and see what needs to be done and yell at it like Chris Jericho. Tell that pile of leaves it just made the list!

Full Hesher: Do like my pal Nick does and go to a Bills bar and get blackout drunk. I feel like if I really wanted to just say fuck it and tie one on, Bills fans would be the ones I’d do it with. The Bears being on bye seems like the best time to get put through a table.

Binge Watching: You’ve missed a lot of great television while opting to watch Matt Nagy be himself on Sundays/Mondays/Thursdays. You’re gonna spend your Sunday catching up on, uh, actually I don’t know if there’s anything good on since I pretty much only watch sports these days. I’m fucking lame.

I’m gonna be honest, I’ll be watching RedZone. Fuck it, I might as well enjoy some good football this week. I’ll spend my morning listening to fantasy football stuff as I cook lunch, and enjoy the bye. I’m not inviting a damn soul over, I am going to sit on my ass and just love watching football.

Loving the Bears is fucking stressful, we all need a week off too.

Football

Sons Of Wilber Marshall – Week 5 Roundtable

By Sam Fels 1396 0

So what do we make of this loss and the 3-2 record at the bye? On the one hand, the Bears looked bad for most of three quarters against a bad team and the game was still there to be won and they gave it away. On the other, they were missing two of three starters on the d-line, and were with a backup QB who proved last year he can get you out of one game but not much more. Just one of those days?

Tony Martin (@MrMartinBruh): For about ten minutes, I was optimistic that the Bears would’ve somehow gotten to the bye at 4-1 and had a week to get healthy and make a real push. This one stung, for more reasons than one. The defense got pushed around, that special teams sequence that gave Oakland a first down on the eventual game winning drive was awful, and the offense once again abandoned the running game.  Honestly, Daniel played well enough to win the game, but they just didn’t have enough. That first half was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen as a football fan.

I didn’t see Chuck Pagano blitz too much today, and the Bears got run on in a way that I haven’t seen in a long time. Get well soon, Akiem.
Brian Schmitz: As I wrote, I am under the impression that this team may not be as good as everyone thought they were. The offensive line is either really hurt or really bad, but they are probably both. The run game is nonexistent. But MOST importantly, the offense is getting out-schemed at every turn. That is where the truth lies.
Tony: I’m pretty sure Kyle Long is either done mentally or no longer physically effective. He is becoming an actual detriment on the offensive line. In fact, the line is one of the biggest problems with this team. No matter who is at QB, they’re being rushed and there are no real seams opening up for the running game unless David Montgomery is creating them via the cutback.
Is there any tweak to the o-line or offense over the bye that you’d like to see? Or is even possible? Obviously new personnel isn’t really an option. 
Tony: The offensive line simply needs to improve, by any means necessary in my opinion. You’d think it would be obvious to Nagy, who works with the most fearsome defensive line in the NFL, that if his offensive line isn’t holding up to switch it up to shorter dropbacks and quick hitting plays. The Bears have been beaten this year on defense when the quarterback gets rid of the ball quickly and the running game is established; I’m wondering when he game plans similarly for his own offense.
Brian: The only way to tweak the O-Line would be to put them in a better position to succeed. Which would entail more roll outs in the passing game and more outside runs in the running game. Getting outside in the run game requires your TE’s and receivers to be responsible enough to block. So basically, we are asking out skill guys to run block because the line cannot. This will assuredly end well.
Tony: Kyle Long- as Lizzo said: “I’m crying because I love you (but you probably shouldn’t be starting at guard)”
Football

Three Things We Learned From Week 5

By Sam Fels 1341 0

Hello! This is something I did at FanSided last year. But Fansided is dumb and evil, so I’m bringing it to you, the people. It’s not mean to be serious, because you shouldn’t take the NFL and the Bears seriously.

You Can Only Get Away With A Backup Defensive Line For So Long

For one week, the Bears rolled in backups, beer vendors, and a couple janitors into the rotation against the Vikings and they were all getting to pose behind the line after making a play. They didn’t need Akiem Hicks or Bilal Nichols that week, and you wondered if they were just unearthing people like Sarumon and the Urukai. But there’s a reason Hicks is an All-Pro level player, and you’re supposed to struggle to replace him. Trying to do it for a second straight week showed that.

Without Hicks, the Raiders seemed to figure out they could throw multiple people at Khalil Mack and Eddie Goldman, and no one else was going to be able to make them stop. And that’s how it proved. We’re doing the Leonard Floyd early-season thing, where we wonder why he isn’t running wild when only facing one guy. Backups proved to be backups. It’s football, injuries happen, and they determine a lot of what will happen in January. It went well for the Bears last year, which is why it still feels like such a missed opportunity.

If Hicks’s elbow suddenly putting up a carnival tent inside his skin keeps him out long-term, it’s a huge problem. Especially for however long Nichols is out along with it. Once you get your backups on film, you give everyone a chance to see what they can and can’t do. The Raiders and Jon Gruden pretty quickly figured out what they couldn’t. At least the Bears will know what’s coming.

You Can Only Get Away With Your Backup QB For So Long

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, because we did this last year. Chase Daniel gets you out of the Thanksgiving game, as backup QBs are kind of designed to do. Get you out of a game. One. Two is pushing it. So the next week, Daniel made enough plays to keep the Bears in it against the Giants when the defense took the week off, but he also made enough plays to get you beat. He got you out of the Vikings game. Here comes a second straight game with him behind center, and boy didn’t it look the same? Enough plays to give you the lead, enough plays that put you in that hole to begin with and then lost you the game. That’s kind of what a non-starting QB in the NFL looks like. There’s a reason every rule is meant to protect starting quarterbacks. Your season is fucked if they get hurt.

There were two sacks at least that were from Daniel holding the ball too long, possibly because he’s not much taller than a fire hydrant. In more Rex Grossman comparisons, he has a nasty habit of running straight backwards when under pressure instead of stepping up, possibly because stepping up into the pocket would cut off his vision even more. He should have had three INTs, got bailed out by a roughing-the-passer call for one (and game-changing penalties appear to just be things that are going to happen every week). The other two were bad.

He didn’t get much help. It went a touch overlooked in the buildup to the season, but the Bears couldn’t really run the ball last year. We pinned it on Jordan Howard or Matt Nagy’s over-creative nature, but there weren’t many places for Howard to run. We wanted to think the more explosive and elusive David Montgomery and another year of Nagy’s schemes would get around it. Yeah, well, Kyle Long is made of more spare parts than the car they give Matt Damon at the end of “Good Will Hunting.” Charles Leno was doing his own version of Hamilton out there, and has been. Again, switching Whitehair and James Daniels…was that really so clean?

The difference in football is that you can’t solve it from outside the organization. In the other three sports, if your right fielder can’t hit or your second-line left-winger gets hurt or you need a new small forward, there’s a trade deadline for that. Football doesn’t work that way. How do you solve this internally though?

Everyone Is An Expert On Jet Lag Now

This was an argument making the rounds right around the second quarter, and it was the Bears decision to fly out to London on Thursday evening, arriving Friday morning. What it ignored was that the last time the Bears had to do this, they thwacked the Buccaneers after flying out on Thursday. Most teams fly out on the Thursday. They get a plane you and I will never see. They have experts on this we don’t. They weren’t attempting to sleep in a coach seat next to the smelly guy while sitting up. It’s fine. Whatever. They lost because they got their ass whipped, not because they were groggy. Shut up.

Football

Week #5 – Bears 21, Raiders 24: Jon Gruden Bitch-Slaps Matt Nagy; Bears Lose To Raiders

By Brian Schmitz 1835 0

What if maybe, just maybe, this Bears team isn’t as good as we thought? Sunday evening in London provided the Bears an opportunity to show the world that they are indeed the Super Bowl contenders that they think they are. Then, unfortunately, the game began and the oft- celebrated Bears team was punched square in the dick. Time, after time, after time. To see an opponent physically dominate the Bears on defense AND offense was a surprising as it was disappointing.

But why were they dominated? The answer is because the more I see this offense, the more I believe that Matt Nagy has been figured out. We’ve blamed Jordan Howard. We’ve blamed Mitch Trubisky. We’ve blamed the O-Line. But really, the blame needs to fall on the shoulders of the guy who is calling the plays. I get it – Nagy is cool. His players like him. He’s great with the media. That’s all great, but it doesn’t mean dick when you can’t score points with any sort of consistency. This loss and this unspectacular season are on Matt Nagy.
Should we really blame Nagy for a team that came out flat, and stayed flat? Probably not, but if you are looking for excuses, you can blame the overseas travel, the late week arrival in London, and of course, a plethora of injuries to key players. However, any or all these excuses should not have resulted in the type of ass kicking that Raiders orchestrated. Don’t kid yourself, the Raiders were the better team today and if not for some hideous turnovers by Derek Carr, the Bears very well could have been shut out.

Where did it all go wrong? It started early folks. The entire first half had the look of the Raiders playing the role of the Chicago Bears. They pressured Chase Daniel on almost every drop back and parlayed that with an epic run defense that held the Bears to a grand total of 16 rushing yards. The 17-0 first half whitewash could and should have been even worse had Richie Cognito, who is a certifiable crazy person, not committed a questionable personal foul penalty that forced the Raiders out of field goal position. The 1st half numbers tell you all you need to know about how this team started:
Points 0
1st Downs 2
Total Yards 44
Passing Yards 28
Times Sacked 3
Turnovers 1
Rushing Yards 16
Penalties 3
Time of Poss. 10:07

Meanwhile, the defensive unit formerly known as the Bears was not much better, giving up the following:
Points 17
1st Downs 14
Total Yards 208
Passing Yards 109
Times Sacked 0
Turnovers 0
Rushing Yards 99
Penalties 0
Time of Poss. 19:53

The 2nd half afforded the Bears the opportunity to cash in on some nonsensical Derek Carr decisions, but this was a game in which you were never comfortable with the way things were going. Chase Daniel looked like a backup quarterback most of the day, which is troubling since Mitch Trubisky is essentially a glorified backup at this point. Daniel finished 22-30 for 231 and 2/2. On the surface, this isn’t the worst of days. However, both INT’s came at the most inopportune of times and he also had a terribly thrown ball picked off which was negated by a penalty. One positive we can take from Daniel’s performance is that there will not be any talk of a QB controversy this week; so, we have that going for us…which…is nice.

Still, with all the shit we saw from the Bears, this team was still in position to win the game. Late in the 4th quarter, The Raiders would have to go 97 yards to score a touchdown and win. 97 yards against the leagues best defense? Not happening right? Well, you know what happened. The Bears forced a punt, but where called for running into the punter. Then they give up a fake punt for a 1st down. Then Derek Carr put on his big boy pants, made some great throws, spread the ball around to 5 different receivers, and delivered the most impressive drive a Bears opponent has had all season. Touchdown Raiders. Game. Over.

Where does this leave us heading into the Saints game in 2 weeks? Well, we are looking at a Bears team who is lucky to be 3-2 and very likely could or should be 1-4. It would be a damn shame to waste this generationally talented Bears defense on a team that can’t score points with any consistency. I am afraid that is what we are going to continue to see from this team moving forward this season.

Football

Week 5 – Bears vs Raiders Matchup: Oakland vs What Could Have Been

By Wes French 1447 0

I know you’ve seen the stat. It’s pretty damning.

Since the start of the 2018 season, it’s as follows:

Yikes.

So Khalil Mack, on his own, has matched production of the Oakland Raiders since they made the decision to not pay him. The team a whole hasn’t fared much better, notching a 6-14 record since the deal, acquiring more future draft picks than wins. Oh, and there was the whole sideshow event this Summer with Antonio Brown, another star that Jon Gruden deemed worthy of the massive contract, only to have him throw himself out of town with tantrums before he played a snap in the Black and Silver.

Curious, that choice. To NOT give the requisite guaranteed money to a star pass rusher in his prime and then turn around and trade for an end-of-his-prime, if not twilight of his career, Wide Receiver with a history of on/off the field issues is pretty odd. But it’s not that odd when you consider Gruden, and his old school machismo persona. He took over a team he previously had coached for, but this time he had all the power he’d lusted for. He saw a 12-4 team, a playoff team, from 2016 go down it’s leg in 2017 and fall to 6-10. And then he saw the team’s best player talking about wanting the biggest contract for the position ever. All this added up to Gruden being able to show everyone in the organization who held the power. That, FRENTS, is a special kind of dick-swinging.

So what’s the matchup here? did I bury the lede?

This is the REVENGE game. The VINDICTIVENESS game. The THIS COULD BE US BUT YOU PLAYIN’ game.

Khalil Mack vs the entire soon-to-be Las Vegas Raiders. Let’s see what some of the beat have been saying this week…

So Mack is good. Okay. What else…

Oh. So the guy they drafted to take over the pass rush for Mack won’t be able to play, or arguably their best WR…

Narrator: They did not, in fact, get five downs.

At least the Raider OLine is sorta prepared?

Oh.

 

If you pray, pray for the Derek Carr and the Raiders on Sunday.

photo credit up top to Kevin Fishbain
Football

Week 5 – Bears vs. Raiders Preview: The Reunion Special

By Tony Martin 1441 0

vs.

 

Bears (3-1) vs. Raiders (2-2)

Sunday, October 6th 12:00

TV: Fox

London, England

Fun Fact: Winston Churchill believed non-white people were genetically inferior to white people, while also drinking enough to make Charles Bukowski look like a 14-year -old after three Natty Lites

Top of the morning, Bears fans! As you read this, we are more or less two days away from our boys taking on the Oakland Raiders, who are technically the home team at the fabled Northumberland Development Project, which I swear is the actual name of the stadium they’ll be playing in on Sunday and not something that I made up.

Let’s lead with the obvious story: Khalil Mack is returning to destroy the hopes and dreams of the team that traded him to Chicago for a handful of magic beans and a collection of Walgreens coupons. Sure, two first round picks is a high price to pay, but Mack is worth it beyond any shadow of a doubt and we know how bad Ryan Pace has been drafting in the first round. This one is going to be personal, and I am so excited to watch him get held on every single play on Sunday. It probably won’t matter how many midfielders or whatever the Raiders send to chip him, expect Mack to rule the pitch and bend rookie lineman Kolton Miller like Beckham would (I know nothing about soccer, I apologize). Khalil Mack is going to do to the Raiders what the British East India Company did to most of the world in the era of imperialism. Expect it to be NSFW.

This game feels like classic Chicago Bears football: the defense dominates and the offense, knowing how much more exciting it is to watch them play, does their best job to keep it interesting by going out three-and-out every time they’re on the field. Outside of an impressive drive to start the game and one more drive before the half, this offense didn’t inspire much last week in the absence of Mitch Trubisky, who I am also sure will be genetically modified when he comes back from injury and throw for 500 yards a game.

These games are maddening because if the Bears had a three touchdown lead for once it would be nice to see the defense get to pin their ears back and do the things that make them so fun to watch: take chances for the big play. Eddie Jackson is an All-Pro safety, and imagining him in a game situation where he’s feeling more comfortable to jump a route or two could lead to a few more team celebration photos in the opposing end zone.

Can Chase Daniel keep this offense running as smoothly as my first car, a 95 Ford Escort with one functioning door? That might be all it takes to win with the way this defense is playing. A beat-up defense ethered Minnesota’s offense so badly last week that it literally caused team dysfunction. They’re wrecking homes at an Ashley Madison rate, and you can’t compete with that kind of efficiency. Chase will be asked to manage the game, and while that’s a major regression from what we all expected going into 2019, if it means a Bears W, I’ll take it. I’m expecting Javon Wims to catch a touchdown in this one, and if I’m wrong I’ll buy everyone reading this an order of fish and chips*.

*Not an actual guarantee, but hey I did learn that the British call french fries “chips” because it’s short for “chipped potatoes.”

Honestly, I just want to see notable Red-Assed goober Jon Gruden have a shitty day. He’s a total heel, but not in the fun heel way a la Dusty Rhodes. Gruden has X-Pac Heat (for those unfamiliar, X-Pac Heat is when wrestling fans hate a wrestler not because of effective heel work, but because they are unlikable as a human being/suck at wrestling). If I can’t get WALTER to come out and hit Chucky with a lariat, I’d hope the Bears could make him regret pretty much everything he’s done since taking over creative control of the Raiders and doing exactly two things:

1. Cutting or trading everyone that made this team interesting or fun
2. Ruining how cool it is that I got a dope throwback Raiders Starter jacket three years ago

Derek Carr is overrated, and is at best a middling QB who wants to be Tony Romo for a new generation. Josh Jacobs has potential, but isn’t there yet. Jacobs, Darren Waller, and Tyrell Williams are the best things going for this Oakland offense. This is a team that was in need of a Dolphins-esque rebuild, and they entrusted it to a fucking clown and I feel bad for the 10-15 good to great players on the roster.

This game could go a number of different ways. I can see it being anything from a 24-3 laugher in favor of the Bears, or the Raiders could shock us all and pull out a close one. When in London, nothing is guaranteed, except for Allen Robinson‘s dominance (16 catches, 213 yards, 2 touchdowns in 3 career games in London), because he’s the best Zed receiver taking the pitch on Sunday.

Prediction: Bears 27, Raiders 10

Everything Else Football

The Vault- 2015 Bears vs Raiders

By Tony Martin 2633 0

Content Warning: Self-Harm

I got a text at 11:45pm this last Monday from my main football watching homie that just said “I can’t do it anymore, thank you for always being real. Love ya.”

I wake up at 5am for work so I was asleep and therefore missed it, but as soon as I saw it I messaged him until he woke up. Turns out he was drunk and sad and lonely and in a very very dark place, and had no recollection of sending me that text message. I told him if he ever tried to hurt himself I would beat him to death with my own hands.

My guy has been there for me since I was 17, so pretty much exactly half my life. We’ve lived together and helped each other out, and if I had a “real” wedding, he’d be the best man for sure. Football is a big part of that bond, as I’m sure it is for a lot of the people reading this and their friends. It takes a special kind of friendship to be able to sit there in silence for hours except for the occasional snarky comment or mention of how awful your fantasy team is looking this week.

You know the old adage: “If horseracing is the sport of kings, then surely football is… a very good sport as well.” What makes sports so great for me, my buddy, you reading this: the escape. Fuck your dead-end job or your overdue car payment, and that term paper can wait until Sunday night, because it’s Bears football. The thing you grew up watching. The team that means so much to you even though there’s no logical reason to explain why.

That Sunday time is a sort of collective unwinding time for those of us lucky to not be at work, leaving us (hopefully) recharged for the next week of new or repeating nightmares. It’s for that reason that I stopped being so emotionally invested in the outcome of Bears games and just love the experience of watching “My Team” play on Sundays, regardless of what the final score reflects.

Writing “The Vault” has become one of my favorite assignments during the week, because as I’m looking at box scores and game notes and trying to remember how to spell player names, I’m also going back to old memories. I can remember where I was when so many of these games happened, from the couch I sat on to what I ate to how it felt watching Johnny Knox damn near break in half.

My friend was there for so many of those afternoons or nights. The amazing second half comeback against Arizona in 2006. The entire Super Bowl run, when we looked at each other after Devin Hester’s opening kickoff touchdown and knew this was the year without saying a word. We were horribly wrong and smoked the saddest blunt when we got home.

I knew he was lonely and depressed, but one of the hardest things to break out of is the mask of masculinity that we all wear, especially when a lot of the time you spend with someone is spent watching hours of the most bro sport in existence.

Sometimes it doesn’t get any deeper than “what should we get for lunch?”, but I need to do a better job. We all need to do a better job. Maybe it isn’t a good time to ask if someone is doing okay emotionally when the Broncos go ahead late with a 2-point conversion, but football brings us closer together and I hope we can use the bonds we’re strengthening with every yell at the television to notice when our football friends aren’t acting like we’re used to. Prince Amukamara posted the picture and caption on Instagram that I used for the banner image this week, presumably to let his friend Roquan Smith know that he has his back no matter what, and that, combined with my friend’s scary text on Monday really changed how I wanted to do this piece today.

As I sat down to write this, I looked back at the 2015 Bears/Raiders game, and I watched highlight videos. I looked up how to spell Sebastian Janikowski, I looked at how open Marty Bennett got for a Jay Cutler pass, and I got sad. All I could think about is how hard it would be to reminisce on these games if I lost the friend that I spent so many weekends watching them with. So I hope you’ll understand if today’s Vault is more of a reflection on why it is that Bears football means so much to me, and also a plea to you, the reader: check in with your friends, because okay doesn’t always mean okay.

Football

Raiders Spotlight: The Fraud That Is Jon Gruden

By Sam Fels 2059 0

Maybe I and many others are just biased because of how annoying he was on Monday Night Football on ESPN for so long. We can be a vindictive lot. Still, there really is only one organization that Jon Gruden could have gotten another job for, and that’s one as equally fraudulent as he is. Step up and be counted, Oakland/Vegas Raiders. It truly is a match made in heaven. But then, no one likes cashing in on nostalgia quite like the Raiders, who haven’t won a playoff game in 16 years.

It was that long ago when Gruden made a name for himself, mostly because he scowled on the sidelines, which he most certainly didn’t practice in a mirror in his office every day, that football commentators mistook for CARING SO DAMN MUCH. Sure, he got a label as a quarterback whisperer as he guided Rich Gannon to a 1st-team All-Pro season, which is a harrowing sentence to write. Somehow people forgot that Raiders team then completely screamed at its shoes in AFC Championship game at home to a Ravens team that didn’t have an offense.

Yeah, Gruden’s Raiders got screwed in the tuck-rule game the following season. It certainly broke the whole organization.

Oh right, Gruden won a Super Bowl. When he was hand-delivered to an already-made team with a Hall of Famer at every level on defense. Somehow, Al Davis’s kid didn’t seem to notice that the Buccaneers never won a playoff game with Gruden after that. And here are the QBs he “whispered” to “greatness”: Brad Johnson’s decline, Brian Griese, Chris Simms (whom he had to have, remember), Bruce Gradkowski, and Jeff Garcia. Real murderer’s row there.

But none of this matters to Mark Davis. All that matters is sizzle, even if it’s own feet into the pavement outside the Vegas Strip where his palace to excess and stupidity grows daily. He desperately wanted to move to LA to be a name. That didn’t work. So now it’ll be Vegas, where a lawsuit from a cocktail waitress at The Palms almost certainly awaits.

And that’s really all the Raiders have been, trading on a name made long ago that barely anyone can remember. Even the dude with skulls on his shoulder pads (who’s a grandfather now) is losing feeling in his limbs. They’re not rebelling against anything anymore, other than competence and success. They don’t stand apart from any other team. They don’t even pick fights with the NFL, as that seems to be the Patriots job, and they also win all the time. It must burn that the Pats stole the Raiders’ rep and they didn’t even bother to notice.

So here are the Raiders, squeaking along in a stadium no one wants them and they don’t want to be at with Gruden claiming he’s going to turn Derek Carr into something other than a background-filler. All he had to do was clear out perhaps the most gifted defensive player in the game, much to our delight. And it’ll be Khalil Mack who calmly lays the head of Carr at Gruden’s feet this Sunday to make his point.

But hey, Davis got his headlines, or headline. Gruden got to cash in and show everyone how smart he thinks he is while posturing for sideline cameras. In that sense, everyone wins. Except the Raiders very often.