Are You Scared Of The Las Vegas Raiders?

3-0 vs 3-0 (Sh!t)

It is officially Raiders week, and for once, the game arrives with real division stakes instead of feeling like an afterthought.

The Chiefs and Raiders have one of the longest, most heated rivalries in football, but during this Kansas City run of dynastic dominance, the bad blood hasn’t boiled over as much simply because the Raiders have been cooked for years. Outside of opening day, these two teams have never faced each other undefeated. This week, both teams enter at 3–0.

That momentarily changes the entire dynamic of a rivalry that extends back to the glory days of Al Davis versus Lamar Hunt. History lesson aside, when both franchises are sitting at the top of the division without a loss, the old rivalry tension comes right back to the surface, boiling—red and gold blood.

Did The ‘Faiders’ High-Priced Scraps Finally Learn To Play?

How did we get here? Perhaps-mayhaps decades of being flat-out garbage finally paid off in top-tier draft capital not tripping and busting over themselves, and Da Raiders somehow managed to stop being tangled up in their own shoelaces long enough to field real football talent. With the Sith Lord Tom Brady sitting up in luxury suites as a minority owner pulling the silver and black strings, maybe they finally tied those laces and can run with the rest of the league to the dark side of the Black Hole.

They drafted Fernando Mendoza number one overall, only to leave him on the bench with a clipboard because veteran Kirk Cousins is running the show under center. And unfortunately, it’s working. They recently handed Michael Mayer a massive bag to pair up with Brock Bowers long-term, and it has turned into an absolute matchup nightmare—on paper. Then you look in the backfield, and they’ve got Ashton Jeanty running with everything to prove after going top-five in the draft last year.

To top it all off, Baltimore completely botched the trade when Vegas tried to ship off Maxx Crosby, so instead of playing in the AFC North, he’s still parked on the edge waiting to sprint full-speed at Patrick Mahomes and that thought is rather unsettling—if not a little terrifying.

There is zero love lost between these franchises. They play twice a year, every single year. Chiefs fans despise Raiders fans and vice versa, but it’s a mutual disdain that also holds some respect-hatred—like a Chiefs flag buried deep beneath their billion-dollar-dome. Frankly, we’d probably hate their new city just as much if they could ever manage to stay in one place for more than a decade without packing the moving vans with eye black and spiked shoulder pads. Now they sit out in the desert at Allegiant Stadium—better known to the kingdom as Arrowhead West.

The Real Fear: The Inevitable Troll Tsunami

Make no mistake, Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce have treated the Raiders like a personal punching bag for years. Chris Jones has spent half his career living rent-free in their backfield, while Nick Bolton and L’Jarius Sneed know exactly what this rivalry requires. But this young Raiders roster doesn’t carry much of that baggage. They’re fast, hungry, and coming off a dogfight against the New Orleans Saints that felt a lot like our scrap against the Indianapolis Colts. They also already handled the Miami Dolphins and the perennial offseason paper champions, the Los Angeles Chargers. Go fu$k yourself, San Diego.

The ultimate nightmare here isn’t just dropping a divisional game to a team in black—it’s the fallout.

Unless you are the blindest fan in the Kingdom who legitimately pencils in 17–0 every August, you know the Kansas City Chiefs will drop an ugly game eventually (some fanatics have that worry every day). But the day it happens, America and the online world will unleash a shit-talking storm like nothing you’ve ever seen. The trolls will have their heads spinning like triple-seven slot machine jackpots, frothing at the mouth because they finally get to dust off their stale Chiefs memes instead of crying that our best player is the referee—High five, REF, good game!

Losing to the Raiders in Vegas would be a killer—straight up Michael Myers on Halloween night.

Demanding A Complete 60 Minutes

So how do the Chiefs silence the desert? They have to knock on the front doors of Arrowhead West loudly, hand them a trick and a treat, and leave with a 4–0 record.

That means all three phases showing up at once. The defensive front can’t mess around like they did in South Florida, where they managed to touch Malik Willis exactly once all afternoon. That half-hearted pressure will get you carved up against this group. They need to be after Kirk Cousins like NFL front offices every offseason, except forget the bag—bring sacks!

Alohi Gilman has to step up on the back end, Sneed needs to lock down his assignments, and the linebackers have to swarm to the ball and not miss tackles in the backfield. If they take a single quarter off, Jeanty will make them pay on the ground while Bowers chews them up slowly like that orange Halloween candy no one likes.

Offensively, Mahomes needs his weapons to stop the early season nonsense. Rashee Rice, Travis Kelce, and Xavier Worthy cannot be dropping catchable balls, and the play-calling can’t just boil down to saddling up Kenneth Walker III to smash between the tackles on repeat without getting him out in space. Get Emmett Johnson involved. Dial up actual vertical shots down the boundary to Worthy and Tyquan Thornton. We need 30-plus yard explosive touchdowns that take the soul out of our home away from home, and then you close the door by pounding Walker into their star defenders on the way to the end zone—again.

The Chiefs shouldn’t be scared of the Raiders. They run this AFC West division. But they will have to play their sharpest, most complete football game of the season to keep that lingering dread from turning into an L.

Are you scared of the Las Vegas Raiders?

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