Raiders Got One – Does This Make Them a Relevant Rival?

Raiders Got One – Does This Make Them a Relevant Rival? – by James S. McGregor – Okay, folks, we’ve had some time now to digest and hopefully put behind that dreadful game in which the Las Vegas Raiders pulled off a victory over our Kansas City Chiefs in Arrowhead Stadium. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I still mentally throw up a little just thinking about it. Anyway, what’s done is done. The big question now is (well for some, thus we must discuss it): should we consider the Oakland (oops, I mean Las Vegas) Faders (oops, I mean Raiders) a legit rival? I also feel a deep personal need to put this to bed considering how terribly wrong I was when I wrote the game preview for this one (if you haven’t read that little disaster of an article by now, there’s really no need to – bottom line is I missed the boat by a LOT). So… let’s discuss, shall we?

This question really deserves a 2-part answer:

• Part 1: the Raiders are a team in the AFC West – thus, by definition, they are a divisional rival of the Kansas City Chiefs, and,
• Part 2: are the Raiders a rival of the Chiefs in the same way that the Ravens/Bills/Steelers currently are?

IOW, are the Raiders actually good enough at football to challenge K.C. in the present, the near future, and long-term? Can they threaten to usurp the AFC West throne and possibly make a deep run in the playoffs? I don’t want to give away any spoilers here, but I have to be perfectly transparent right now: I’m laughing as I type that.

Part 1: The Chiefs-Raiders Rivalry, as a Tradition

Really, the key statement here is that if you are a Chiefs fan, you most likely hate the Raiders more than every other team. This statement probably even holds true when the Raiders are completely irrelevant as a football team (as they have been for some time now). The thing that makes this rivalry so deep and brutal is that you didn’t even have to grow up watching it in the 60s and 70s when it was absolutely nasty. This is a rivalry that burns so hot that it’s been passed down from one generation to another. We all know there was a time when both teams were really good and were competing hard to get to the Super Bowl (or the AFL Championship before the merger). However, it wasn’t just that both teams were really good. These two teams also played some of the most violent, relentless, pertinacious football when they clashed with one another. A situation could very literally become bloody during a Chiefs-Raiders game.

With this most recent loss, the Chiefs are now 12-3 against the Raiders in the Andy Reid era. The Chiefs also hold the overall series lead at 67-54-2, which, dates back to Sept. 16, 1960, when the Dallas Texans (Chiefs) defeated the Raiders 34-16. The Chiefs also have a 2-1 record against the Raiders in the playoffs (including a win on Jan. 4, 1970, which led up to the Chiefs first Super Bowl victory). The Chiefs also hold a longer win streak over the Raiders — 9 games, from 2003-07 — than vice versa (7 games, 1975-78). One area where the Raiders currently have the historical upper-hand is AFC West titles; they have 12, compared to the Chiefs 10, though it’s safe to assume that the Chiefs will take the lead in this statistic by the end of the 2022 regular season… right (More to come on that a little later)? Bottom line here is that before Reid came to town, this rivalry was a lot more evenly matched, and that this has not really held true in the years since. However, the tradition of the rivalry does still hold true, and these teams absolutely still don’t like each other.

Oh, and did I mention, fans of the two teams don’t exactly love one another either? When the team was in Oakland, I personally refused to ever travel there to watch a Chiefs-Raiders game. To be honest with you, I like living, and I don’t really want to die, getting stabbed in the face by a thug wearing black and silver while walking to from the “Black Hole” to my car just because I am wearing a Chiefs jersey. Furthermore, anytime I had a friend announce that they were planning to make the trip, I would always say something along the lines of “You’re an idiot, but try to be safe and don’t get killed.” Someday, perhaps we can all escape this terrible COVID reality we’re in the middle of and fans can pack into stadiums once again. When that happens, I for one, will be very interested to see what the fan dynamic will look like in Las Vegas. I might even try to make the trek to catch a game there. In my personal opinion, it’s difficult to imagine there will be a super strong fan-base in Vegas: but I’m also confident the general organizational rivalry will remain intact and strong as ever.

Part 2: Are the Raiders Any Good Now?

HAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!!!! No.

Okay, let’s all just take a deep breath and go back to that confident understanding that the Chiefs still own the AFC West Division. They lost a game! So what? They also lost four games last season en route to a Super Bowl championship. It may be a lot more painful to endure a loss against the rival Raiders, at home especially, but this absolutely does NOT make the Raiders serious contenders (the Raiders are 4-3 and 3 games behind the Chiefs at the halfway mark of the season).

We’re all familiar with that old saying: “Any given Sunday,” right? Along those lines, if you have paid any attention to last week’s Chiefs media availability leading up to Sunday’s Jets game, our coaches and players were echoing that sentiment. When asked about facing the Raiders, both Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes underlined the importance of taking every game seriously and going through a full week of normal preparation – even for the Jets. What they understand is that every team in the NFL can compete, even if their record suggests otherwise.

So, when the Chiefs lost to the Raiders, the latter team simply showed up to compete where the prior did not. Another sentiment that has been put out many times by players, coaches and media is that when teams come to play the Chiefs this year they are giving their best shot. Everyone knows the Chiefs are reigning Super Bowl champs (something us fans haven’t experienced in a long time, if ever), and every team wants to beat the champs. The Raiders took that Week 5 regular season game so seriously that they took victory laps around Arrowhead Stadium before heading back to Vegas – this was essentially their Super Bowl, and they knew it.

The Chiefs and Raiders, along with the rest of the league, now head into Week 9. The Chiefs sit at 7-1, having rebounded spectacularly on the road against the Buffalo Bills and then blowing out another AFC West rival in the Broncos, 43-16 (both road games, by the way) as well as dealing with the winless Jets. The Raiders, on the other hand, while the next best team in the division, currently sit at 4-3; and it appears they have come back to Earth since leaving Kansas City, as they then went on to be destroyed at home by the Bucs in a 45-20 route.

The real key to remember right now is that the Chiefs game against the Raiders was a pure anomaly. They’re still the best team in the league, as well as one of the most well-rounded – the performance of the Chiefs defense in every other game, besides the Raiders game, may be adduced toward this opinion. Any further attempts by the Raiders to thwart our Chiefs will be utterly futile, and I fully expect to see the K.C. go into the “roomba” in Vegas to put the Raiders back in their place of mediocrity and completely humiliate them in their house. Book it!

James S. MacGregor — ArrowheadOne

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