At some point, sometime soon, there will probably be a Good Blog about the Raiders on this site. There are only so many ways for everyone to call this team a mess, and the internet as a collective whole has done an admirable job hitting every single one of them over the last six months. But the Raiders are mere days away from playing [checks notes] the Los Angeles Chargers, so something good's going to happen. I can feel it.
For now, we are going to continue being extremely depressing. We just really wanted to sneak in one last pointless, frustrating summary of Something Mean That Was Said About The Raiders On The Internet. Think of it as an exercise in self-preservation: by the time other team's fans are saying all these things, they won't be able to hurt you! Because you said it all yourself in September! It's a very healthy way to live.
Today's exercise revolves around The Athletic, who decided to release a poll focused on fan optimism. They used all the extremely scientific tools – it is a New York Times budget, after all – at their disposal to release fan optimism scores for each team. Want to guess how optimistic Raiders fans are?
Less than 40% of Raiders fans have any optimism about the 2024 season
"Pessimist Steven: Can’t win without a quarterback. It seems most stats people will tell you defense is extremely volatile year over year, even among the elite teams. So banking on a straightforward growth pattern on defense seems risky, at best, and offensively nothing matters without the QB."
"Pessimist Dan: The offensive line will not play well."
Dan's a man of few words, and I respect that. Dan knows that there's no point in explaining all the detailed reasons why the Raiders are barreling towards a third place finish once again – Dan knows that one sentence is enough. Dan knows ball.
As for the three optimistic Raiders fans out there, they're all in on Antonio Pierce. That's basically their whole argument – that he'll have the defense playing up to their expectations and the offense overshooting theirs. One even mentioned that Gardner Minshew reminded him of "fun," which is a wonderful way to phrase it. Let's just go with that: Gardner Minshew will definitely, totally, absolutely make the Raiders "fun."