The Oakland Raiders are paper champions. The most impressive thing about the team is that it's doing this -- this being an 11-3 record with an inside track to get a first-round bye in the playoffs -- while being the Oakland Raiders, a franchise that hasn't sniffed the playoffs since 2002, the same year they last posted a winning record. Their three losses came in their three toughest games of the season (vs. Atlanta and both Kansas City games) and they weren't all that competitive in any. Their wins over teams with winning records (Tennessee, Baltimore, Tampa, Denver, Houston) were either aided by 1) scheduling helpfulness (getting the AFC South as the West's conference head-to-head this season is as good as it gets); 2) playing Baltimore, Denver and Houston as they began or were wrapping up losing skids; or 3) having a right-place, right-time kind of game. Despite what you might think or hear in the 165 hours until Oakland plays again, an 11-3 mark isn't the indication of success you might think. In the past five full seasons, 12 teams have started with that record or better. Only one of those teams won the Super Bowl. One other more made it to the Super Bowl. Five didn't win a single playoff game.
On the other hand, the Oakland Raiders are terrifying. They have a young quarterback making good on all his hype and who was very much in the MVP race before laying an egg last week in Kansas City. They have a dynamic, young, speed receiver in Amari Cooper who not only has game-changing talent but attracts so much attention he's helping his elder, Michael Crabtree, have the best season of his career. Their coach is an embodiment of the team's spirit, taking exactly 59 minutes into the season to win over his team when he successfully called for a game-winning two-point conversion in New Orleans in Week 1 rather than kick the extra point to force overtime. And though the defense isn't the kind of unit that's keeping offensive coordinators up all night, it has Khalil Mack, an account-for-at-all-times defensive end who's second in the AFC in sacks despite consistently being double-teamed and who is easily the second-best defensive player in football behind Von Miller, though plenty would argue it's the other way around.
Except for the years when there's a 14-, 15- or 16-win team entering the postseason, you could say the same thing about most NFL playoff fields: It's wide open enough for even the most flawed teams to hoist the Lombardi Trophy. (The Giants are trying to prove that for the third times in nine years. And we'd be remiss to not note that the last eight teams to finish with 14 or more wins failed to win it all.) So, in theory, Oakland's problems make it just like every other team in the NFL. Even the perfect ones (like, say, the ones who enter the Super Bowl 18-0) have their flaws.
It's hard to shake the feeling that the Raiders have more flaws than most. They're basically the Washington Redskins, with the small caveat that the Raiders are already in the playoffs. Both are teams with a prolific quarterback, a shifty running game, a solid offensive line and a defense that proves one player can only do so much. Their NFL rankings in each major category, numbers that aren't gospel but useful as a reference, bear this out (ranks as of Week 14, as the Redskins don't play until Monday night):
Are either major threats to win the Super Bowl? You'd be hard-pressed to find somebody making anything but a show-off prediction for either. But here's the thing: Nobody -- nobody -- wants to see the Oakland Raiders or Washington Redskins in the playoffs, not with their high-powered offenses and ability to score so quickly in so many different ways. The contenders -- New England, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Dallas, New York and Seattle -- will want no part of them, far preferring someone else to do the dirty work. (Kansas City and Dallas will least want to face their division rivals in the playoffs, as both swept their respective series. Winning that third straight has always proved difficult.)
No one will compare the Raiders and Redskins, though -- not when Oakland will win its division with 11 or 12 victories and probably host a playoff game in the second week of the postseason while the Redskins are scoreboard watching to see whether they'll control their only playoff destiny. The teams though are more similar than either would like to admit. Oakland doesn't want to face the fact it's an 8-5 team cosplaying as an 11-3 one, and the Redskins don't want to wallow in the fact that they could be 11-3 with some field goals or red-zone conversions.
The Raiders' mark gives them greater expectations and thus more opportunity for future disappointment. But that's life in the NFL. You can be a little overrated. You can be only a minor threat to do damage in the playoffs. And you can still be a terrifying draw for a team with legit Super Bowl aspirations. That's what makes the whole thing so damn fun.
