INT. RAIDERS TEAM HEADQUARTERS – DAY
A team owner sits behind a large desk with noticeably rounded corners. He sets a binder on the desk, opens it, and begins speed-reading through its contents. After a few seconds he mutters “nothing new here” and sets it aside, then begins again with a second binder. This one seems to get more of his attention; once he finishes with it he presses his lips together – a vaguely diabolical smile – and closes it contentedly.
— [intercom flies open] —
LAYCEE: [via intercom] Mr. Davis?
MARK DAVIS: [picking up telephone handset] HI I’M MARK DAVIS!
LAYCEE: [via intercom] Yes, Mr. Davis. Your three o’clock appointment is here.
MARK DAVIS: [frowns] WHY CAN’T I SEE HIM?
LAYCEE: [via intercom] He’s not in the room yet, Mr. Davis. I’ll send him in.
MARK DAVIS: OKAY THANK YOU BYE BYE! [drops phone handset into the garbage can]
— [door flies open] —
MARCUS MARIOTA: Thanks so much for taking the time to see me, Mr. Davis.
MARK DAVIS: HI I’M MARK DAVIS!
MARCUS MARIOTA: Um…yes. I, uh…
MARK DAVIS: WELCOME TO THE RAIDERS!
MARCUS MARIOTA: Thanks very much, Mr. Davis, it’s great to be here.
MARK DAVIS: HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR NEW TEAMMATES?
MARCUS MARIOTA: They’re great. Mostly. I haven’t had the best training camp so far, but once I’ve got a hang of Coach Gruden’s playb…
MARK DAVIS: ARE THE OFFENSIVE PLAYS HARD? I WISH WE COULD SCORE A TOUCHDOWN ON EVERY PLAY!
MARCUS MARIOTA: Coach Gruden’s offense is pretty complex, yeah. Derek Carr seems to have a pretty good handle on it, though, and he seems to get better and better the longer he works with a coach. So I’m optimistic that he’ll improve off last year’s 21 touchdowns against only 8 interceptions. But as I’m sure you know, Gruden’s offense relies a lot more on the running game, and Josh Jacobs is everything to this offense. The question isn’t whether he has the talent to deliver, it’s whether or not he can hold up to the massive workload that Gruden will be saddling him with. He’s certainly got the mentality; the big question is whether his body can hold up.
MARK DAVIS: I HOPE YOU’RE NOT BEING MEAN TO THE NEW KID.
MARCUS MARIOTA: The new kid…who, you mean Henry Ruggs? Or one of the other new receivers – there’s a lot of them. Henry’s not being treated differently than any other rookie. All Derek wants to do is throw to Hunter Renfrow anyways. And the tight ends, he seems to really like those guys too. We’re not going to be lighting up the scoreboard this season, but when do we ever?
MARK DAVIS: SO IT SOUNDS LIKE THE DEFENSE IS GOING TO HAVE TO STEP UP AND KEEP THIS TEAM IN GAMES.
MARCUS MARIOTA: I mean, that’s not an area I can really speak to, but yeah, they will have their work cut out for them. I guess the best thing you could say about last year’s squad is that the were “aggressively mediocre”. As good as the offense was about keeping control of the ball, the defense was even worse about taking it away – only the Chargers were worse. The defense is pretty much the same as it always is; a rotation of draft reaches and iffy free agents in the secondary and on the defensive line along with the most neglected linebacking corps in the league.
MARK DAVIS: ARE WE GOING TO BE A GOOD TEAM, MARCUS?
MARCUS MARIOTA: Well…
MARK DAVIS: BE HONEST!
MARCUS MARIOTA: Probably not, no. I don’t think we’ll be much worse than last year, but it’s hard to see us getting much better, either. With the move to a new city, and coronavirus throwing things into turmoil, it’s hard to see us staying focused and making any significant strides forward.
MARK DAVIS: OH.
MARCUS MARIOTA: But you know all this, Mr. Davis. What I wanted to talk to you about is these weird emails I’ve been receiving.
MARK DAVIS: I SEE.
MARCUS MARIOTA: They’re from a guy who calls himself “Q”. Originally I though they were from my old coach Chip Kelly, doing some kind of a “quack quack” thing like we used to do, but Chip said it’s not him and he says he’s too busy with this militia thing he’s doing to mess around with anything like that. And I realized that they come from a Raiders.com address, so I think it has to be someone involved with the franchise.
MARK DAVIS: WHAT DO THE EMAILS SAY?
MARCUS MARIOTA: Some weird, weird stuff. Like at first I thought it was some motivational stuff, like “where we go one, we go all” and something about a football, but then it went way off the deep end.
MARK DAVIS: DID IT SAY SOMETHING ABOUT HOW LARRY NASSAR WAS FRAMED?
MARCUS MARIOTA: It did, yeah! And then there was this stuff about how Bill and Hillary Clinton were about to be arrested for murdering Seth Rich along with MS-13, and that Robert Mueller was actually an inside man working to bring down this Deep State cabal…
MARK DAVIS: [finishing in unison with MARCUS MARIOTA]…OF CHILD MOLESTERS!
MARCUS MARIOTA: Wait…
MARK DAVIS: AND HOW YOU CAN PREVENT CORONAVIRUS BY RINSING YOUR FEET WITH A DILUTE BLEACH SOLUTION MIXED WITH HYDROCHLOROQUINE?
MARCUS MARIOTA: Yeah, but I’ve never…
MARK DAVIS: AND HOW YOU CAN IDENTIFY FELLOW MEMBERS OF THE RESISTANCE?
MARCUS MARIOTA: Yeah, by the fact that they order pizza with…
MARK DAVIS reaches into his top desk drawer and withdraws a baseball cap. He smiles thinly as he puts it on, then punches the intercom button.
MARK DAVIS: [into intercom] LAYCEE I WANT SOME PIZZA.
LAYCEE: [via intercom] Yes, Mr. Davis. The usual?
MARK DAVIS: [into intercom] YES I WANT A PIZZA WITH HALF BACON AND PINEAPPLE AND THE OTHER HALF WITH PEPPERONI AND SAUSAGE AND…
MARCUS MARIOTA: [finishing in unison with him]…bananas…wait…that’s…are you the one who has been sending me these emails?
MARK DAVIS: That’s right, Marcus.
MARCUS MARIOTA: But…why?
MARK DAVIS: Because I wanted to recruit you, my young friend.
MARCUS MARIOTA: I’m already on the team.
MARK DAVIS: I’m talking about a different team. We’re going to need the help of people like you.
MARCUS MARIOTA: “We”? Wait, are you…are you part of “Q”?
MARK DAVIS: [touches his nose] Very astute, Marcus.
MARCUS MARIOTA: What do you want from me? What do you want me to do?
MARK DAVIS: At the moment? Nothing. I want you to play backup quarterback to the best of your abilities. Do you think you can do that?
MARCUS MARIOTA: Of course I can. But…
MARK DAVIS: And that’s all for now. I need to know I can trust you before we move onto bigger things. So go about your life, and when the time comes I will be in touch again.
MARCUS MARIOTA shakes his head in confusion and gets up to leave.
MARCUS MARIOTA: I’m sorry, Mr. Davis, I’m not interested in being a part of this…whatever this is. I’ll keep this conversation between us, but…
MARK DAVIS: Oh, there’s no need for secrecy! Tell Laycee. Tell your teammates. Tell the world. The best part is…no one will ever believe you.
MARCUS MARIOTA steps towards the door.
MARK DAVIS: Oh, and Marcus?
MARCUS MARIOTA looks back.
MARK DAVIS: Trust the plan.
Wat
Maybe one of the gamblors here can calculate the odds on whether the low-grade civil/race war that’s been going on in this country for years will become a full-on fucking bloodbath before or after November 3rd. Jesus Fucking Christ:
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/what-are-these-monsters-doing-kenosha-cops-trigger-outrage-for-cuffing-jacob-blake-to-hospital-bed/
This is the rambling of an idiot
Well, “Mark Davis” has 9 letters, and 3 squared equals 9, and Foursquare is a game that has one more square, and…look, I’m not going to do the research for you.
On August 13, the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury voted to keep a Confederate monument in Lake Charles, Louisiana, standing at the spot in front of a courthouse where it stood since 1915.
But after Hurricane Laura ripped through the area Thursday morning, the “South’s Defenders” monument was torn from its base.
Insert obligatory (imaginary) Nelson Muntz ha ha gif here.
And still Stevie stands tall. Well, not tall because he was a fucking dwarf.
Pieces of Viking pottery with traces of cat and dog paws, seen at the Musée de Normandie in Caen Castle.
Dogs and cats still do that shit in freshly smoothed wet cement.
Ah…. yeah, that was the point.
There’s some medieval papers with cat prints on them, too.
Yeah, I think I had found those at some point too.
Subscribed to The Athletic last month. Enjoyed it. Making the mistake of venturing into the comments the last few days. Enjoying it a lot less.
Why are you wasting your money on that garbage?
For some stupid reason I responded to comments from last night’s post.
Anyway, I think the most striking thing about what’s going on with the NBA and, god willing, at some point the NFL, is that no one is using the word “Strike” for what the players are doing. It’s like one of my affinity bar associations putting out messages on BLM etc. while conspicuously and torturously avoiding using words like “solidarity” and “collective” where those words/ideas are the exact expression of the English language that they are trying to describe without describing. Because my ostensible minority colleagues and in the larger sense the media and professionals in general are fucking traitors to the public and the communities we come from (that are only important when it comes to exploiting said communities in order to individually advance oneself as a fucking token to work for people raping and pillaging those same communities).
Anyway, it’s all a fucking disgrace. I mean what the fuck is wrong with the world when professional athletes have stronger principles and are more willing to stand by them than people like teachers and other people who fucking keep this country from collapsing?
big if true.
Mariota? I mean, he is from Oregon. I still like Sam Darnold as NFL player most likely to Rittenhouse any black teammates in the locker room for having a book.
He’s from Oregon, which means he’s either a gentrifying virtue signaling piece of conservative shit acting like the world is just if half of the ten billionaires that own everything are women and one and a half is black; or he’s a fucking methed out redneck QAnon/Boogaloo piece of shit.
The only good thing I can say about this shitty state right now is that career prosecutors in Portland are sad/angry that the new DA is slightly less tolerant of their office and local cops being racist shitheads who pal around with white supremacist terrorists than the last asshole.
Have you seen Darnold?
He’s a fucking methed out redneck.
“That’s A Very Special methed out redneck, sir.”
Caveman methed out redneck quarterback is afraid of the humming wires.
Oh, I forgot – their record will be 7-9 again.
The season will only go nine weeks.
ex-OAK will be 0-9
That first picture kilt teh boner!
Meowth, that’s right!
This is without question the laziest and least informative season preview that this site has ever published. FIRE THIS WRITER!
Counterpoint: This is the hard-hitting, incisive reporting this site desperately needs. GIVE THIS WRITER A RAISE!
Miniature football helmets for some, oversized spiked shoulder pads for others…
Wait. Writers get paid???
In Canadian Tire money.
Hmmm…$105.46 on the CDNAF.
Quick! To the Losers Investment Club!
*Tyre
No, we don’t go that far. Never mind the Aussies who call jail, gaol!
It’s a British (Victoria?) reference. Tyre, tire, tired, fucking language.
Canadian Tyre Pounds would be something now!
And would make it much easier for my terrible puns.
Will gladly accept CT money
Considering this is about the Raiders, I presume you mean that literally