It’s impossible to find an NFL expert who sees the Oakland Raiders as some sort of trap game. The Chiefs are widely expected to roll.
If I told you before the season started that we’d see a team score over 50 points and lose, you’d probably call that an unnecessary overreaction to the NFL’s continued tinkering to make offenses more explosive. If I followed that up by telling you the team that would score over 50 and lose would be the Kansas City Chiefs, you’d probably say, “Okay, yeah, never mind, that makes sense.”
Is there any more Chiefs loss than being the first team in NFL history to eclipse 50 points and lose? It somehow feels even more Chiefs-y than any of the inexplicable playoff collapses. Even when it all goes right, it all goes wrong.
But there is a light at the end of being the losers of one of the NFL’s greatest regular season games. Ironically, that light emits from a place known for its complete absence of light: the Oakland Raiders’ soon-to-be-former Black Hole.
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Black holes, of course, are the space-time phenomenon that functions as a convenient plot device for lazy science fiction screenwriters. Black holes, in reality, exhibit gravity so strong they suck everything into their horizon. The Raiders, of course, are the American football phenomenon that function as a convenient home for people who like to dress up as characters from one of those same lazy movies where looking like a garbage can came to life is a substitute for a personality. The Raiders, in reality, just suck, and have no winning on their horizon. So the Black Hole is actually a fairly apt namesake for their home.
I can think of no better way for the Chiefs to wash the taste of their loss to the Los Angeles Rams out of their mouths than a bye week followed by getting to play the Raiders. So, you know, two bye weeks.
Now that I’m done stretching this piece to publishable length by trashing the hapless Raiders (and I didn’t even bother to clown Jon Gruden—hey, I got to leave some material for the next Raiders game), I’ll get to the actual purpose of this series of articles; tracking experts’ picks.
It should go without saying, it’s looking really good for the Chiefs:
ESPN: All Chiefs
CBS: All Chiefs
FiveThirtyEight: The Chiefs have the highest win probability of the week, at 83%. They also still sit at second in FiveThirtyEight’s Super Bowl win probabilities at 18%, trailing only the New Orleans Saints. Taking care of the Raiders should change that after the Saints were upset by the Dallas Cowboys.
This week isn’t a “trap game”. It isn’t an “any given Sunday” situation. The Raiders are a mess. A deliberate, fire-sold mess that, no matter what Jon Gruden tells you, is designed to lose and lose in bunches. The Chiefs will win this game, they’ll win it easily, and anything less than that would be a failure. Especially coming off a bye.