I believe the Raiders are the future ...

Brass Balls Del Rio has taught them well and sent them on the way ...

Shown them all the moxie they possess inside ...

OK, so that might be a little bit wacky and over-the-top, but I bet someone in the Silver-and-Black army out there is doing their best Whitney Houston impression right now and belting it out with me. The Raiders ... did it again ... in dramatic fashion ... on the road. The Raiders have the best young quarterback in football that no one ever seems to talk about. They have an elite running game and offensive line. The defense has been largely better since a horrible start.

Bottom line: The Raiders are back.

They matter, again. They are relevant and fun to watch with a spirit and camaraderie and never-say-die attitude that seems to be infectious. As a neutral observer, they are a team you might even seek out if given control of the remote. There is little doubt that the uber-gutsy decision to go for the win with a 2-point conversion by head coach Jack Del Rio in New Orleans in Week 1 is reaping continued dividends and reverberating each week with how his team plays the game.

Don't get me wrong, they didn't beat a juggernaut on Sunday by handing the Ravens their first loss of the season. But the Raiders did pick up a potentially huge wild-card tiebreaker down the road, they won in a hostile environment, and after seemingly decades of struggling outside of their time zone, they moved to 3-0 on the road, with all of the wins coming in the Central or Eastern time zone.

And if any of the legions of Floridians who used to attack me on Twitter for saying for years that Carr is far superior to Blake Bortles -- taken a round ahead of Carr by the Jags and the first quarterback taken in the 2014 draft -- well, I dare you to try to concoct a cogent counter-argument now. Go for it.

I've been touting the Raiders potential for years. I picked them to finish .500 a year ago and to crack the postseason this year, and after a quarter of the season, I see no reason to back down from that now. Carr is a gamer, and Amari Cooper might not even be the best receiver on the roster. Michael Crabtree is a beast physically and in the red zone and in the end zone. And on Sunday, for the first time this season, the potentially devastating sack tandem of Khalil Mack and Bruce Irvin looked the part.

In a year in which there seems to be so few truly great teams, and with the AFC a jumbled collection of largely mediocre-to-bad football teams, the Raiders are capable of doing some damage. They have scored 10 touchdowns in their first 11 red-zone trips this season, I might point out.

Watching the postgame footage of the team celebrating around Del Rio, with Carr having led the comeback in the final minutes, throwing his fourth touchdown of the game (without a pick) and his third to Crabtree, and being presented the game ball from his coach, that there is extreme belief in this young gunslinger. This isn't one of those situations where everyone has to concoct faint praise or find ways to bestow faux accolades or go to such lengths to talk up their quarterback that you start to wonder if they doth protest too much (Houston, I may be talking to you).

Nah, you don't hear much about Carr nationally, or the Carr-to-Crabtree connection (that's who he looked to in Week 1 with the game on the line as well). And when people do mention the Raiders, it generally seems to be in regards to skepticism that they have truly turned the corner. Well, they have.

Derek Carr and Michael Crabtree continue to make big plays happen in the clutch. USATSI

And if any of the legions of Floridians who used to attack me on Twitter for saying for years that Carr is far superior to Blake Bortles -- taken a round ahead of Carr by the Jags and the first quarterback taken in the 2014 draft -- well, I dare you to try to concoct a cogent counter-argument now. Go for it.

It's actually kinda funny to remember when Bortles vs. Carr was kind of a thing. Carr has 62 touchdowns to 26 picks in his career and has been far better in the clutch and done far less padding his stats in garbage time. Bortles (53 TDs to 41 INTs in his career) has thrown nearly as many interceptions in home games (21) as Carr has in his entire career.

Here's what Carr has done through the first month of the season: Complete 68 percent of his passes. Throw for over 1,000 yards. Toss nine touchdowns to just one interception, and taken just two sacks. Post a quarterback rating of 123.4.

He has at least one touchdown pass in every game and has completed at least 60 percent of his passes in each game. There might be a couple of quarterbacks playing better than him in the AFC right now -- maybe Big Ben, maybe Philip Rivers, maybe you could try to make an argument for Andrew Luck given the poor supporting cast around him. But I would have to lean toward Carr, and even in the Raiders' only loss, at home to the Falcons, he was stellar and it was the wilting defense that did in Oakland in the second half.

That defense has looked much more capable, by and large, the last two weeks against far less explosive offenses (the Titans and Ravens). They still need to improve on that side of the ball, without a doubt, but it's also quite fair to say that guys like Mack and Irvin and top-pick Karl Joseph haven't played their best football yet, either.

The Raiders host division rivals -- the Chargers and Chiefs -- the next two weeks and I like their chance to at least split there. Then the Raiders continue their grueling schedule by playing back in the East Coast consecutive weeks, again (at Jacksonville and Tampa). Let them come out of the first half at 5-3, and I really like their chances of playing January football. And who's to say they won't be better than that.