The Great One returns with more prognostication from beyond this mortal plane.
Greetings, Raider fans! It is I, the Truth, the Answer, and the World's Most Dangerous Hermit, Raiderdamus the Great and Powerful. I come to you for yet another season of Raiders football bringing you the eternal and faultless word of the Great Beyond, who will tell us what will befall our beloved Oakland Raiders. I know you have all been waiting breathlessly for this, because you've been hounding me for months about it. Today, your patience is rewarded. Let the slaughter begin.
When Raiderdamus was a wee lad, I grew up in a home where football was a Very Important Thing and as such there was much talk of football and a lot of stories and lore being passed from generation to generation. My father taught me about a concept which became known as the Saints Stigma. This basically amounted to the fact that "anyone who has ever been associated with the New Orleans Saints is crap and will never win anything".
The two faces of the Saints Stigma were Archie Manning and former Saints coach Jim Mora. Anything ill that befell either of these two men or their sons was attributed to the Stigma. Jim Mora was awful as the coach of the Saints and then as the coach of the Colts, and he is most famous for being incredulous at the idea that the Colts could make the playoffs, as he hoped they could just win a game. Any game.
Jim Mora, Jr. also went into the coaching ranks, and is still suffering from the Stigma. He didn't win shit in Seattle and hasn't won shit at UCLA. The Saints Stigma can be blamed for Josh Rosen throwing several picks against Texas A&M just last week.
Archie Manning may be one of the most talented quarterbacks who ever lived, but we don't celebrate him as we should because the Saints were beyond awful while he was there. His two sons never won jack shit in college. Peyton Manning never beat Florida and lost the Heisman Trophy to our own Charles Woodson. Stigma.
What about Eli Manning, you say? I posit that even a curse as strong as the Saints Stigma cannot stop the universe crapping all over Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.
The Saints themselves no longer suffer from the Stigma, as they exorcised it by winning the Super Bowl. Who did they beat to do this? New Orleans native Peyton Manning. They literally had to sacrifice their own child to get rid of the Stigma. Good on them.
But now, it's time to reveal my communication from the Great Beyond regarding the upcoming game in New Orleans. As is my custom, I entreated the Omniscient One to reveal to me the fate of that game, and here's what he had to say:
"You're back again! It's been several years now, you're not tired of doing this yet? Well, I guess this might be the first year the Raiders are actually a good team. Who you got this week? The Saints? Heh heh. I have plenty to say about them.
People say New Orleans all the time without giving any thought to the Old Orleans, which is in France. Louisiana is a very French-inspired area which you can tell by their cooking, hedonistic attitude, and the last several times LSU has played Alabama. The fleur-de-lis is a beautiful symbol, but I think the French nature of Louisiana would better be represented by a white symbol on a field of white, like Penn State.
Orleans is famous not for its cheese or its rudeness like many French towns, but for being the hometown of the Maid of Orleans, the Magical Jesus Trollop, Joan of Arc.
Joan waged a war against England because she had visions from God telling her to support the French king Charles VII. She ended up being captured and burned at the stake for her troubles. She started off strong and ultimately went down in flames because she had no defense, so she's a lot like the Saints.
New Orleans has a long and storied history of associating itself with mystical spirituality and magic. Their most famous practitioner was Magical Voodoo Lady, High Priestess Marie Laveau.
Laveau's influence can still be felt in New Orleans today, in that it's a creepy-ass place where you can sacrifice a chicken in the street and nobody thinks you're weird. However Laveau is way more cool than the magical practitioners in the Raiders' potential future home, Las Vegas.
Yeah, New Orleans wins here.
New Orleans is also famous for Mardi Gras, which is the celebration of the end of Lent, which is a made-up month long holiday wherein Catholics are required to give up earthly pleasures and spend time in prayer and contemplation. It's a good thing that Lent is in the spring, because that isn't football season and the Pelicans are out of playoff contention well prior to Fat Tuesday. Today Mardi Gras is celebrated by drunken idiots who didn't give up anything and use the holiday as an excuse to look at women's breasts- as if they needed an excuse.
The Saints themselves are way less interesting than their home city. They have sucked on defense for years but have elected to have former Raider castoffs Rob Ryan and Dennis Allen as their defensive coordinators. I can only assume Chuck Breshnahan will be manning the sidelines next season, and his playbook will literally be printed on Swiss cheese.
Let's be honest here. Letting Dennis Allen be in charge of your defense is like letting Michael J. Fox be in charge of your fine china.
We know because we are Raider fans that the Saints' defense will be awful, but what about their offense? Well, the Saints have in the last decade drafted two one Heisman Trophy winning running back in Reggie Bush and Mark Ingram, and have stubbornly stuck both of them in offenses which never run the football but are predicated on the arm of noted pyramid scheme scam artist Drew Brees.
The fuck you are, Drew.
While Drew Brees is one of the best quarterbacks we've seen this decade, he's not getting any younger. Here he can be seen celebrating his latest birthday.
The Saints have had six years to prepare for Brees' retirement or untimely death behind his terrible offensive line, but have utterly failed to do so. Their backup plan was former Colorado State QB Garrett Grayson, who wasn't even that great in college, but they just waived him and all they have left is Luke McCown, who was serviceable at Louisiana Tech (as if anyone in Louisiana knew how to operate technology more complicated than a FryDaddy). Let's check in with the Broncos in a few weeks to see how starting a mediocre college quarterback in the NFL goes.
Even I, the Great Beyond, had a difficult time remembering Luke McCown existed. I'm pretty sure his mother doesn't even remember having him. When asked about her children, Mrs. McCown says, "Well there's Josh McCown, Randy McCown, John David Booty McCown, Cade McNown... and I think that's all of them." Luke McCown is the type of guy who would be enlisted to help plan his twin brother's surprise birthday party.
Should Brees go down, which I suspect is the main goal of Raiders OLB/DE Khalil Mack on Sunday, the Saints will be absolutely screwed. They will be like the 2011 Colts but without Andrew Luck waiting in the pot at the end of that shit rainbow.
The Saints have the misfortune of being owned by the Benson family, who are the worst kind of dysfunctional rich white people and have proven themselves to be the biggest pile of shit seen since Jurassic Park.
Since the Saints cannot define themselves by winning, they have elected to define themselves via their rivalry with the Atlanta Falcons, whom it appears we will be tackling next week. Listen up, Saints. You're irrelevant, the Falcons are irrelevant, nobody gives two shits about your "rivalry". Raiders/Broncos is a rivalry. Patriots/Jets is a rivalry. Cowboys/Indigenous Persons is a rivalry. Saints/Falcons is a slapfight between a pair of three year old girls over a tiara that reads "We Suck Less" in rhinestones. Neither of you even matter as much as the Titans do this year.
The Saints will move the ball, but they have about as much chance of stopping the Raiders' offense as Will Smith does of suiting up for this game. EITHER Will Smith. Oakland will flood the Superdome with a torrent of offense and the Saints will be so embarrassed they might just pack up and head to San Antonio.
The Saints will be lucky to finish third in their division, and all their fans will head up to Philly for the next draft decked out in Leonard Fournette jerseys and they will all boo when the Saints take another defensive lineman in the first round who will probably hurt his knee before the season begins. This is your life, Saints fans, an endless spiral around the toilet of football hell, knowing that no matter how close to the rim you get you can never stop going downward. Get your paper bags ready.
Raiders win, 35-27.