Padecky: These are trying times for Raiders’ faithful

Maybe Jerry Seinfeld was right. Fans root for laundry. They cheer for team colors. Could place a three-legged chicken in the backfield and it wouldn’t matter. As long as he’s wearing The Silver and Black.

This can be the only reason why there were so many Raiders fans in the Las Vegas stands Sunday. They must have been repeating that metronome they once heard so often, especially here in Santa Rosa where the Raiders once trained.

“The greatness of the Raiders is in the future,” the late Al Davis used to say so often with his nasal twang.

Al, we’re holding you to it, since the greatness of the Raiders was in 1983. That’s the last time the Raiders won a Super Bowl. Your team has worked so hard in the last 39 years just to get to this Sunday.

The Raiders won a moral victory.

You died in 2011 and I would have never said that last sentence to your face. You regarded moral victories the same way you regarded a sandwich left out in the Vegas sun for three days. Moral victories were for the other team after they played The Greatness.

The Raiders surprised everyone and gave the 49ers a scare. It may have been the best Raiders game of the season. But that’s what moral victories do. They tease. They dangle. They hint. And they yank you back to reality - the Raiders are 6-10 with dark clouds in the offing.

Josh Jacobs, the NFL’s leading rusher who had just set a Raiders rushing record, is unhappy and may leave. Davante Adams, one of the five best wide receivers in the league, may follow him because he came to the Raiders to be with his buddy, Derek Carr. The quarterback was benched so the team could make sure he wouldn’t get hurt; injured trade bait gathers dust, not interest.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” owner Mark Davis said a few weeks ago. That statement was to establish some comfort, patience and perspective for his laundry wearers. Instead, it created laugh tracks, sound bytes and an incredible lack of perception. Oh, and dismay. Rome wasn’t destroyed in a day either.

In the 39 years since the Raiders won the Super Bowl, they have had 12 winning seasons. That’s a 30.7 winning percentage. The Raiders are 59 games UNDER .500 during that time (281-340). The Raiders are 6-9 in the playoffs.

The team has had 12 coaches since getting blown out of the 2002 Super Bowl. They’ve had just two winning seasons since Al Davis died on Oct. 8, 2011.

All these numbers might seem pedestrian and unalarming if applied to the Houston Texans or the Chicago Bears. Teams with a history of oops and I’m-sorry usually rate a ho-hum and let’s go to dinner, Marge. But no team in the NFL has created as high a profile as the Raiders, due in large part to Al Davis holding the electric cattle prod.

Raiders fan or not it was great theater to see what Al would do to annoy the league. Move to Los Angeles? Why not? Welcome malcontents and bad boys? Yep. Let the hair grow long and forget to shave? You bet. Verbally slap Pete Rozelle at every opportunity? What fun. Don’t apologize for safety Jack Tatum being called The Assassin? Deal with it, chump.

Make the quarterback cry? What? Huh? That’s what Carr did after the Raiders lost to Indianapolis on Nov. 13. In the postgame press conference, the quarterback apologized for getting weepy. Carr spoke of his dedication to the team and said many others have sacrificed their bodies so much it was a task “just to sleep at night”.

Then Carr delivered the hammer blow to reality, a statement you never heard from Kenny Stabler or Rich Gannon.

“I wish everybody in that room (locker room) felt the same way,” Carr said.

The team’s departure from the past was complete and certified. Say what you want to say about Carr and much has been said: the best bad quarterback in the NFL or the worst good quarterback? But no one can question his loyalty to the team.

That no one surfaced to claim Carr only spoke for himself was the sound of crickets, the doom of silence, a fact irrefutable. That the Raiders last spring signed Carr to a three-year, $121.5 million contract extension only makes the situation messier, albeit even if there’s an escape clause.

For the fully committed Raiders fan in Sonoma County who will fly to Vegas or anywhere else the eye-patch plays, they will squeeze sunshine out of this season. After all, the Raiders lost five games in which they were led by at least 10 points at the half. They lost four games in overtime or the last minute of regulation.

See how close they were? Just with a tweak or one play here and there the Raiders could be 11-5 right now and in the thick of it. So is the twig Raider fans grasp. Might be a thin twig, even a fragile twig, but it’s a twig nonetheless.

For the fan who started loving them in Oakland, then in Los Angeles, then back in Oakland and now Las Vegas, no journey is too long when you’re in love. Of course, it helps to feel that way if you’re around 50 or older and remember who was called The Snake and The Tooz and The Stork.

What’s even more interesting is loving the Raiders without experiencing the history, or one of the three Super Bowls, or seeing coach John Madden looking like an upturned laundry basket running down the sidelines.

Youngsters, you should have been there. That you weren’t and still clap and cheer as if you did, the Raider mystique is alive and well after almost four decades of evidence to the contrary. Al’s famous line - “Just Win, Baby!” - must be the smelling salts that get you through another season.

Although you have to be saying to yourself right now: The greatness of the Raiders? I’m ready when you are.

To comment write to bobpadecky@gmail.com.