Why Your Team Sucks 2022: Las Vegas Raiders

Some people are fans of the Las Vegas Raiders. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Las Vegas Raiders. This 2022 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: The Raiders. If you say that name the way Chris Berman jokingly does, I will sneak into your home while you’re asleep and spray the bottom of your shower with WD-40.

Your 2021 record: 10-7. Here’s a team that started off 5-2, dropped all the way down to 6-7, and then ripped off four straight wins to end their season and make the playoffs. Under a temporary head coach, no less. From a pure football standpoint, the Raiders were one of the best stories in the NFL a year ago. Let’s see how that story ended.

I may have omitted certain … details … when mentioning this team’s heroic ascent out of the midseason abyss. The whole reason the Raiders were in such a rough predicament to begin with was because of this:

Ah yes, that famously anti-football guy Roger Goodell. Sabotages the NFL at every turn, he does. I thought that Jon Gruden couldn’t have been any more of a laughingstock back when the Raiders signed him to a 10-year contract in 2018—a contract that he had no chance of making look like a bargain. Then again, I thought a lot of unjustifiably nice things about the Raiders not too long ago. I thought they’d cultivate a decent fanbase in their new hometown. I thought they’d have kick-ass pregame hype ceremonies. I thought that employing the first openly gay player in the history of the NFL was pretty neat of them. I failed to account for the whole “They’re the Raiders” part of the equation, but the Raiders certainly didn’t. Sure, Jon Gruden is a racist blockhead ... BUT!

Glad to know he still loves football. Let’s now explore how deeply uncool this team proved to be before their stillborn playoff run.

Even though Vegas started off 3-0, they still had to come back from 14 points down in two of those games just to have a chance. In one of those games, they also prematurely celebrated a touchdown and then immediately threw a red-zone interception. They got killed by a Bears team that passed for a whopping 34 yards in the second half. They got swept by Kansas City by a combined score of 89-23. They lost to the Giants, which is damnable without me having to go into specifics. They lost to Washington at the gun, on a game-winner from a kicker that the Commanders had just picked up off up the street. They also refused to tie the Chargers in the final week of the season and I’ll never forgive them for it.

But all of that is pretty standard, on-field fuckery for any merely adequate NFL team. Off the field is where things really got unpleasant, even without Gruden's assistance.

Henry Ruggs killed a woman and a dog in that accident. Cornerback Damon Arnette was real-deal released after threatening to real-deal kill people. Because you can’t leave this team merely for being bad at your job. You have to kill a someone, or drive 156 mph with a gallon of tequila sloshing around in your tummy, or brandish your assault rifle like you just unboxed a new PS5, or make jokes about De Smith that even Andrew Dice Clay would leave on the cutting room floor:

Incredible wordplay. Adam Carolla wants to know where Dong Loseden here gets all of his material. Anyway, Gruden was the victim—and do I ever use that word charitably—of a possible Dan Snyder smear campaign that makes Burn After Reading look like a documentary. And you’re not gonna believe this, but Gruden hardly confined his comedy gold to decade-old emails to a former crony. Turns out he’s been a clumsy, racist dipshit his whole life. Who could have guessed, except for literally everyone.

After Gruden’s emails became public, the "michellin" tires on his career blew out and the Raiders were forced to replace him with interim head coach Rich Bisaccia, who went 7-5 in his place, including a four-game win streak to end the regular season. Bisaccia might have even won his first playoff game had the refs in Cincinnati not done this:

Do you know how hard it is to get NFL officials to overlook an inadvertent whistle? These refs LIVE to cite inadvertent whistles to cancel out kick-ass plays. These guys would have annulled my wedding with an inadvertent whistle if they had been given the chance. In fact, I believe that at least half of all inadvertent whistles aren’t inadvertent at all. In this game, the Bengals scored on the most flagrant inadvertent whistle you’ll ever hear and the refs were still like, “Eh, let’s count it anyway.”

And yet, Bisaccia did more with this team in just a handful of months than Gruden had throughout his entire second tenure with the Raiders. If you go by winning percentage—which I will here, because it’s convenient—Rich Bisaccia was best coach Vegas has had since Tom Flores. Making him the permanent head coach not only would have been wise from a football standpoint, but also from a karma standpoint. But when you’re the Raiders, karma is for anti-football Demmycrats. You spit in karma’s face, and then you go out and hire this man …

Your coach: Oh it’s on.

I was excited back when the Colts hired Josh McDaniels to burn their franchise to the ground, but this is even BETTER. How will Josh McDaniels alienate everyone this time around? Will he cut players for noticing his emerging double chin? Will he chew out reporters for parking in his spot? Will he draft Kynzee Tebow? Yes, yes, and yes.

The Raiders have always been decades behind every other NFL team, so it makes sense that they would hire McDaniels and new GM Dave Ziegler to do the whole “Let’s be the Patriots!” thing that nine other teams (not hyperbole) attempted and failed to do, including one that hired Josh McDaniels already. Does this organization even know what cell phones are yet? Does their practice facility have fucking running water? Is that stupid Al Davis flame their only source of light and heat? When this team moved to Vegas, they decided to cut out all of the “rise” part of any rise-and-fall Vegas story and just go directly to losing everything by putting all of their money on the Don’t Pass bar. Matt Patricia lasted longer in Detroit than Josh McDaniels did in Denver. That’s the kind of doomed wager we’re dealing with here.

And maybe you’re thinking to yourself, McDaniels’s Denver years were a long time ago. He’s probably learned from his mistakes. This assumes that former Pats assistants believe can they make mistakes, which is like assuming that Jon Gruden has an IQ above room temperature. The only time that Bill Belichick disciples prosper is when they’re working for Bill Belichick. Untethered from the greatest coach in NFL history, they display all of the ability that a drunken Henry Ruggs does behind the wheel of a Corvette Stingray. And McDaniels wasn’t exactly a brainiac back in New England, either. Again, we turn to Football Outsiders to make that point glaring:

Fuck this guy. I hope he eats that visor.

Your quarterback: Derek Carr, who’ll get you 4,000 yards a season without anything to show for it. That didn’t stop the Raiders from handing Carr a fat contract extension, because overpaying this man to win you nine games is the only way that owner Mark Davis knows how to save face. Carr is a mid quarterback, and I dare say there’s a large enough sample size to predict that he’ll remain precisely that. Forever. Matt Ryan has had a more accomplished career, and I’d rather watch Gruden do a set at the Comedy Cellar than watch that guy’s highlight reel.

What’s new that sucks: Like the Dolphins, the Raiders saw their team barely overachieve a year ago and were like, We’re Super Bowl contenders now! So they stuffed all of their best draft picks into the back of an ’82 Lincoln and sent them to Green Bay in exchange for wideout Davante Adams, who not only wanted to come to Vegas but actively demanded it. Adams is the best wideout in the NFL, but clearly not the shrewdest. Charlie Sheen has made better life choices than this man. Because Jon Gruden almost certainly wasn’t an outlier in the Vegas front office:

You don’t get routinely out-maneuvered by Dan Snyder without being exactly like him. And yet, the Raiders are gonna plow ahead anyway as if nothing is wrong. They traded for Adams. They signed an aging Chandler Jones. They gave out fat extensions to edge rusher Maxx Crosby and wideout Hunter Renfrow. They traded Yannick Ngakoue for corner Rock Ya-Sin. Almost as if they’re indulging in a … what’s the word I’m thinking of? Oh yes, a binge. And binging never has any consequences to it! Did Liberace himself not say, "Too much of a good thing is wonderful?" And that guy’s life ended as happily as anyone can ask for!

Mike Mayock was fired. Kenyan Drake got sent packing. John Madden died after being run over by his own Maddencruiser. True story.

What has always sucked: Raiders owner Mark Davis, who apparently doesn’t know that bellhops exist, makes what little money he has by pretending that his team still has a loyal following. But the Raiders don’t have any fucking fans anymore. They haven’t had any fans since 1994. People who attend Raiders home games now are German tourists who walked into the stadium thinking they’ve been comped free tickets to a Penn & Teller show. And every Raiders lifer is a 67-year-old meth enthusiast living in LA who stages Altamont reenactments every other weekend. There’s no fanbase here. There’s certainly no mystique. There’s only Mark Davis, lugging his grade-school diorama assignment around from league meeting to league meeting, praying for a way out before one of his own players knifes him to death in a casino bathroom.

Alex Leatherwood was somehow an even worse draft choice than Arnette and Ruggs were.

Ratto says: The Raiders finished with a point differential that suggested they should have finished 7-10, marking their seventh consecutive season of not underachieving. And yet it all feels so unfulfilling given that they have lost their only two playoff games since the 2002 Super Bowl and that the defense has allowed more than 30 points 70 times in 177 games. Trust your eyes, not your calculator.

What might not suck: To his credit, McDaniels has assembled a talented coaching staff nearly free of New England mustiness. There’s no real harm in talking yourself into the man. As of this writing, MGM has the Raiders listed at +4000 to win the Super Bowl. Why not take a chance? Bet the deed to your house on McDaniels and you could end up with 40 houses, all of them quite tasteful. Can’t you see it happening? Doesn’t it feel more like an inevitability than a possibility? Go on. Do it. Free money is waiting for you. Don’t be a sucker and miss out. You’ll never forgive yourself.

HEAR IT FROM RAIDERS FANS!

Anthony:

Tim:

Jake:

Derek:

Luis:

Neil:

Tracy:

Burt:

Colby:

Bob:

Conor:

Nick:

Tarek:

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