Trust No One: The Raiders Sent All Their Scouts Home and Won't Let Their Own Families Touch Their Draft Charts

These are the Oakland Raiders that I’ve missed. The Raiders of my youth. The Raiders of my entire life practically, up until the last few years when they’ve just been a sad shell of their former glory. Feared by no one. Playing in front of sad, diabetic incel virgins in silver face paint and “Fury Road” cosplay.

But this more like it. The Raiders acting like the glory days. When they represented something. Paranoid. Secretive. Iconoclastic. Standing against everything and everybody. Including their own flesh and blood. I missed the hell out of Mike Mayock this draft season. I missed Bubble Butt and Taffy Pull and Oily Hips and Burp the Baby. And I don’t know how I’m going to get through 20 or so hours of live draft coverage without him in real time spouting off about all the traits of some long snapper from Old Dominion.

But him and Jon Gruden being so suspicious of their own that they won’t let their scouts in the building or let Mayock’s own daughter hold his binder while he takes a leak is just so … vintage Raiders. This is the kind of thing that would make Al Davis proud.

The kind of thing that made me hate the Raiders back when hating the Raiders was one of life’s simple joys. In that way we used to hate the Soviet Union back when they were a threat to annihilate us and not merely Russia, reduced to buying anti-Hillary Facebook ads. The only way this could  be a better tribute to Davis is if Mayock and Gruden draft every guy at his position who had the best 40-time.

So thank you to both of them. Now I think their draft is going to be one of the highlights of next week. And not just because Mayock once had Tim Tebow as the 3rd best QB in his draft, Blaine Gabbert ahead of Cam Newton and ranked Johnny Manziel ahead of his own QB Derek Carr. But because they’re bringing back the old school crazy to this franchise that desperately could use it.