Hey Bill Plashcke, look what took me 20 minutes… research!

The King of Morons, Bill Plaschke, touched on a very important topic today, his personal disgust for the Oakland Raiders and their penalties!

Truly riveting stuff, Bill. Let’s get right into it, shall we?

The Oakland Raiders played perhaps the toughest football of the NFL’s first week Monday, overpowering the Denver Broncos with three forced turnovers and five sacks while rushing for 152 more (Plaschke’s emphasis) yards in a 23-20 victory.

Bill, if I may interrupt this already amazing piece of sports journalism, but what exactly do you use to quantify the “toughest football of the NFL’s first week”? Did the Ravens not cause 7 turnovers, while sacking Ben Roethlisberger 4 times? While, I admit, I didn’t get to see the entire game, I can imply that the Ravens defense must have been laying Big Ben down on pillows after each sack, or else they would be the clear favorites for the NFL’s toughest first week team.

They also played absolutely the dumbest, most thuggish football of the first week with 15 penalties for 131 yards, more penalties than were assessed the New Patriots, Green Bay Packers and New York Jets combined.

Well jeez, Bill, that sure is a small sample size, 1 week. The Broncos had 91 penalty yards themselves, only 7 fewer than those same Patriots, Green Bay Packers, and New York jets.

By the way, Bill, who in god’s name are the New Patriots? Are there Old Patriots that I should be worried about? How many penalty yards did they have?

This next takes the cake though:

The Jets, incidentally, had zero penalties while mounting a bruising comeback against the Dallas Cowboys, proving it is possible to use both your muscles and your brains, sometimes even at the same time.

The Jets had two turnovers, Bill! Care to guess how many the Raiders had? 1. 1, as in the number that is less than 2. I would take a few personal fouls than fumble the ball in the opponent’s red zone any day. Maybe the Raiders should play New York Jet football and turn the ball over more!

The Raiders never seem to understand this, which once again makes them the biggest waste of football space imaginable, a bunch of talented and probably decent guys who won’t become champions because they are too focused on acting like street punks.

How about the fact that they were 21st in DVOA last year, or that Al Davis is somehow still in charge of the team, or that they let the only good coach they have had in a while walk. No, it is because they act like street punks. Care to elaborate, Bill? Of course you do!

On display Monday was the truth rarely understood by fans with lives draped in silver and black. The color that owns their organization is actually yellow. What they love most about their Raiders is precisely what dooms them. Their rogue rebelliousness may win hearts, but it loses games.

For all their bluster, the Raiders haven’t won a Super Bowl in 28 years. In the eight seasons since their last Super Bowl appearance, after the 2002 season, they have finished an average of 29th out of the 32 teams in number of penalties. How many times have they had winning records during those years? Zero. What has been their record during that time? Would you believe 38-91?

I made a chart for you Bill.

I am sure that you are too stupid to interpret a graph, so I’ll do it for you. There is virtually no correlation between Penalty Yards per Play and a team’s winning percentage.

The R^2 is .0207. That doesn’t bode well for the point you are trying to make. I starred the Raiders data points, just for you, and it actually looks like it is slightly positively correlated, so the Raiders should be committing more penalties!

Go on Bill, please, continue.

And when they weren’t shoving or slapping or tearing off their helmets and prancing around like angry guys on a darkened street corner, they were violating even the most simple of football rules. On one drive, tackle Stephon Heyer jumped offside on consecutive plays.

What!?!?!?! How dare Stephon Heyer do that! He should be burned at the stake! Surely no other back up lineman would ever dare pull a stunt like that. Also, you moron, defensive players go offside, offensive tackles false start.

You remember that last Raider Super Bowl played in San Diego, right? Barret Robbins, the Raiders all-pro center, disappeared two days before kickoff to reportedly go on a drunken binge in Tijuana. He never showed up, and his team never recovered, losing 48-21 to a Tampa Bay Buccaneers team coached by a exiled former Raider coach named Jon Gruden.

Now I am just nitpicking because I hate you, but it is “an” exiled former Raider coach named Jon Gruden, no a exiled. Don’t you read your own crap?

One final thing…

These sorts of collapses will not end until Davis finally retires and releases control of the team, allowing his great athletes to feel comfortable being smart and controlled athletes.

What has any Raider done that is comparable to missing the Super Bowl to go on a drunken binge in Tijuana? And by the way, Robbins was bipolar, and I doubt Al Davis caused that.