Scott Ostler: Raiders’ fans remain loyal to the end
Oakland Raiders’ fans can’t help themselves. Their team’s owner can’t wait to whisk his Raiders out of Oakland and into Las Vegas, but do the fans here rise in mutiny, flipping Mark Davis the Marshawn Lynch double-barreled bird?
They do not. They pack the Coliseum for the Raiders’ first home game in one of their last seasons here, and they give their hearts to their boys.
And they are rewarded with a 45-20 thumping of the Jets, and a 2-0 start to the Super Bowl-or-bust season.
Oh, the irony. In giving their hearts and cash to the Raiders, the local fans are proving what Davis is banking on: that Raiders’ fans are so crazy in love with their team that they will overlook any insult to their loyalty and just keep showin’ up, drunk (with love) and disorderly.
Oakland fans packing the Coliseum is like the Founding Fathers throwing a birthdayparty kegger for Benedict Arnold.
The sun is indeed shining on the Raiders, although, as offensive tackle Donald Penn pointed out regarding the team’s 2-0 start, “It’s still early, boss. You gotta sustain it.”
Yes, but it’s a mighty powerful start. Not only are the Raiders winning, but they are looking like the Golden State Warriors in cleats. Every move the Raiders make is dipped in gold. They seem to be light years ahead of the rest of the league.
They drafted Derek Carr, Khalil Mack and Amari Cooper, and they’re sizzling. They picked up Michael Crabtree and he has regained his classic form as the Crustacean Sensation. The Raiders put a trillion dollars (more or less) into their offensive line, which is keeping Carr, the franchise QB, so clean he doesn’t have to shower after games.
Said Penn, an early candidate for team poet laureate: “If I keep D.C. clean, you gonna see what we saw. Stuff gonna happen.”
Even the Raiders’ highly suspect defense looks solid, for goodness sake. Linebacker Bruce Irvin, on an emphatic downfield tackle, was hit with a 15-yard penalty for excessive Raidering (technically: unnecessary roughness). It was a clean, hard tackle, but the refs are so unaccustomed to the Raiders being gnarly on defense that they threw that flag in surprise.
The Raiders signed homie Lynch as a hate shield against fan defection, and he’s looking like the best offseason pickup in the NFL. Lynch’s crazed sideline celebratory dance during the fourth quarter Sunday — the Beast Ballet? — was a straight tribute to his Oak folk.
Mark Davis, how good is life for him? To borrow a baseball expression which I will approximate, he’s got a horseshoe up his armpit.
Remember how Davis wanted desperately to move his Raiders to Los Angeles, but got deked by his fellow owners, who left him holding the bag? On Sunday, the Chargers and Rams played home games. Both are interesting teams and both lost close games, which came as a crushing disappointment to millions of L.A. football fans when they got the news upon returning home after a day of surfing in Malibu.
The Raiders’ fans might hate Davis for jumping into bed with that trollop Las Vegas, but they’re apparently not going to withhold their affection from the team. There were some empty seats in the upper deck Sunday but basically, the joint was rocking from the start, and the Raiders gave ’em plenty of reason to roar. The Jets are a weak opponent, but weak opponents win games every week in the NFL.
The Raiders, after two games, are shaping up as one of the two or three most entertaining and exciting teams in the league. So maybe the local fans are accepting this season’s Raiders as Davis’ lovely parting gift.
Las Vegas? Penn waved off a question about Las Vegas, saying, “We here right now. They (Oakland fans) don’t seem like they thinking about Vegas.”
Oakland fans lead the world in Zen. They don’t dwell on the team’s fairly recent decades of ineptitude, they don’t moon over the heartbreak that lies two or three years down the road when their Raiders leave. These fans just live in the moment, baby.
Besides, the Raiders, even with Davis and his happy feet and ramblin’ ways, might be the most loyal-to-fans team in Oakland. The Warriors can’t wait to get the hell to San Francisco. The A’s brag that they’re “Rooted in Oakland,” and they are, but only because they have no place else to go. Don’t think they haven’t looked.
The Raiders’ motto two years down the road will be “Scooted From Oakland,” but their fans are determined to block out all that stuff and enjoy the show, here and now. From the Black Hole to the Berkeley Hills, these fans realize, more than most of us do, that we’re all just passin’ through. Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler