American Football Spectacular: Beyond Caring
I stick my hands in my back pockets / and stare back what you don't feel / you dont feel alive? might as well be dead? / well I'm not impressed by threats -- American Steel, "I Don't Mind"
* New England vs. Oakland
Sunday, December 14, 2008. 1:15 PM, PST.
Week 15
Battle For Caring
Only a few games left of the NFL's 2008 season and as is customary, the Raiders are in full plummet. The last things that stand to be parsed out are which players are making enough of a name to picked up by other teams next year, which players are playing enough to be kept via Al's calculi for next season, and those that have given up all hope whatsoever.
"We're not close," said Oakland's best player, CB Nnamdi Asomugha, to the Merc after the last week's loss to San Diego, "and it's clear that we're not close. We don't play good football, we don't play sound football, and we have been undisciplined. We wonder why we don't get prime-time games, and this is why. We were on Monday night against Denver, we got blown out. Now, we came here and we got blown out. You just wonder how many people care and how many people are upset. You can't go out and play the way we played and expect to win or expect to do well."
Ouch.
Tossed into the The Black Hole today are the bloodied New England Patriots. Yes, those former capital-V Villains from last year.
Without Tom Brady at the controls, they're not so scary. And almost out of the playoffs. The Pats have to win their last three and "get help" to limp into the last AFC Wild Card spot.
With no cornerbacks, a dilapidated linebacking corps (including two guys who were retired at season's beginning; Seau & Colvin), no depth at running back, and a second-string quarterback grieving his father's passing, one would think that the Raiders might win the day on their own field.
Not likely.
Despite all the attendant fury towards these Tuck Game-winning Randy-Moss-thieving now-merely-struggin' bullies, the Raiders won't win. They may have greater talent, but they don't have a winning system or winning discipline.
"I would want to say that if the Pats lose that it would be crazily embarrassing," related American Football Spectacular's New England correspondent Gordon "The Renaissance Man" Elgart.
Indeed.
What will occur today under the rain at The Coliseum is one wounded-yet-disiplined franchise outperforming a wounded-and-undisciplined franchise.
How far down does the rabbit hole go? Not even Al can know. Of course, his is the only opinion that matters in all affairs of the Raiders.
But does he care enough to change a cycle that regularly produces results like this?