Raiderdamus’ Friday Foretelling: Raiders vs. Broncos

We are required to inform you that these Foretellings are works of satire and are not for the faint of heart. Due to their content they should not be read by anyone. Please enjoy at your own risk. -The Editor

Greetings, Raider Nation! It is I, DJ MC Lil’ Raiderdamus M.D. D.D.S. Ph.D. XVIII, Esq., here to deliver to you the dankest, most malicious, most diabolical Haterade this side of the Mississippi.

To say that there is room for improvement after Monday’s beating at the hands of the Rams might be an understatement, but there’s no time like the present to get better as the Raiders play their Most Hated Rival, the Denver Broncos, at Mile High this week. In keeping with sacred tradition, I have entreated the Great Beyond to once again bestow his wisdom upon us, that we may too become enlightened. Be humbled by his glory, and weep.

“You’re back again! I guess you want more from me, after I was so very right about the game last week. So who do you got this week Denver? Geez, divisional games already. Do you realize, we’ve been doing this for eight years now, and this will be my fifteenth time laying the verbal smack down on the Broncos?

There are only so many players and ridiculously dressed fans that I can make fun of. They come and they go. But there is one man who will never leave, and that Broncos fans will never, ever be free of.

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Here we see John Elway in his natural state- bewildered and alarmed, but incapable of showing full range of emotion due to his fried-on tan that nobody would ever be able to get in Denver unless they stared directly at snowbanks all day and let nature take its course.

Elway is the ultimate football shitheel. This is a man who was drafted first overall by the Colts, and instead of playing for them, threatened to go play baseball. And this was no idle threat; Elway had been drafted by the Yankees in the second round of the previous year’s draft, six picks ahead of Tony Gwynn. Elway was not only disloyal to the Colts, he was disloyal to football itself.

And this sort of asshattery is par for the course for Elway’s character. Recently, there was a Reddit thread about “Which celebrity is a complete asshole?” Now, lots of them are, but John Elway’s name came up. A lot. Let’s take a look at some of these completely unsubstantiated anecdotes!

“John Elway. His plane is parked at the airport I work at, and I’m friends with an employee that works on it. Apparently, he’s a huge asshole. If he finds any dirt in his jet he starts screaming at the manager and demands to speak to the employee who did the interior. He’s personally gotten several dudes fired just for a small smudge of dirt. One time someone left a fingerprint smear of grease on the engine cowling and Elway personally got the guy fired for that. Mind you, this is NOT Elway’s business. He’s just a customer. Plus, when I see him walking around he just has that “asshole gait”, like he owns the world. Fuck Elway.”

So let me get this straight. John Elway will NOT fire Vance Joseph, who spends the entire first half of every game looking like he doesn’t know whether his headset works or not and is dragging the Broncos to mediocrity with an offensive scheme that makes Greg Olsen look like Al Saunders. He took two years to get rid of Paxton Lynch, whose jersey number doubled as his IQ. But he will fire a hapless airplane technician for a smudge of dirt. This is a man with his priorities in order, certainly.

“When I was roughly 10 years old the Broncos had played the Chiefs in KC and lost. So my parents and their friends decided it would be a great idea to head up to the airport to see the team off. As the team was walking through the terminal my dad handed me something and told me to ask Elway for his autograph. I ran up to him and asked, his response was “Go away kid, im not signing that shit”. Then his bag knocked me out of the way. One of the other players came up to make sure I was ok, but Elway kept walking.”

I mean, who knows, maybe the kid’s dad handed him a copy of Horse Fancy Magazine.

“Elway was also known as the Kit Kat Caper when I was a kid, apparently he was a dick to some trick or treaters if I remember correctly.”

That’ll teach them to show up to Elway’s stable on Halloween without a carrot or an apple.

“I will second (and third) John Elway. He came into the pizza restaurant I used to work in during high school a couple times, and one time on a Friday night he told the staff to tell everyone else in the restaurant that he would not be signing autographs before his family even sat down. (Dave Logan also came into the restaurant a few times, and one time he threw a fit when he tried to order something he insisted was on the menu, but never was). My second encounter with Elway was at a Bon Jovi concert at the Pepsi Center in 2010. He and his group showed up 10 minutes after the show started, and they all just stood in the aisles and took their time trying to get to their seats, loudly laughing and talking the whole time and distracting everyone.”

John Elway was far less a problem for this guy than paying money to see a Bon Jovi concert in 2010.

But Elway being a douchenozzle doesn’t affect the Broncos team. What does effect the team is that they haven’t had competent quarterback play since the second to last year of Peyton Manning’s career and, frankly, have never replaced Elway himself. As good as Manning was, he didn’t have Elway’s arm or his legs. Elway is, in fact, the best quarterback in the Broncos organization right now. But for all his mastery of NFL offenses and front office duties, he still cannot master the fax machine.

Elway’s solution to this is Case Keenum, who finally had a good season last year after eight seasons in the NFL and quickly parlayed Sam Bradford’s misfortune into the starting job in Minnesota and then Denver. Keenum lit up the NCAA, but was an undrafted free agent. Here are the NFL teams currently starting an undrafted free agent at quarterback:

Broncos

That’s it.

What Keenum is good at (besides having only half a first name), and what Elway is clearly banking on, is the ability to not fuck up while allowing the defense to win the game for you. Keenum displayed that in Minnesota, but against Seattle last week he threw three picks to a defense coached by Ken Norton Jr. and the defense allowed 24 points to a team with no offensive linemen. Not sure this plan is gonna work.

The Broncos always try to lean on their running game, but DeVontae Booker lost 15 pounds this offseason because he kept fumbling his fork on the way to his mouth. Booker has a child because he fumbled a condom trying to stretch for an extra yard.

Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

The Broncos’ offensive tackles are Garrett Bolles and Jared Veldheer. I daresay if the Raiders can’t get pressure on the quarterback this week, they never will again. The Broncos’ offensive line might be as bad as the Seahawks’. Nobody on either line could block so much as an ex-girlfriend’s cell number.

It’s very difficult, even when the Broncos are bad, to win in Denver because they play football on the Moon. Luckily, the Broncos are bad. But will that be enough? The Broncos still employ the services of Emmanuel Sanders, who is quietly one of the best players in the AFC. The Raiders will have to do a far better job containing him than Seattle did, which was “not at all”, in keeping with Ken Norton Jr’s custom of totally forgetting that at least one particular offensive player exists every week. Usually it’s a tight end.

And even if the Raiders contain Sanders, there is still the desiccated husk of Demaryius Thomas and also Courtland Sutton to deal with. Case Keenum does not have the quick release of Jared Goff, or his offensive line. The Broncos’ linemen are like Burmese pythons- the more you beat them, the tighter they hold you.

Sean McVay is a terrific coach and a worthy opponent of Jon Gruden, who made the necessary halftime adjustments to stymie the Raiders in the second half on Monday night. Vance Joseph, on the other hand, has difficulty adjusting his own zipper.

Raiders win, 23-20.”