Week 11: Oakland at Minnesota

One of the numerous beer pong-intensive “sports pubs” in our neighborhood will certainly have this game on one of their 45 flat screens, but that’s not the right place to watch it. No, if there’s a right place to watch this one – and let’s be clear about this up front: under no circumstances should you watch this football game – it’s down First Avenue, at Phil Hughes. No apostrophe. No relation to the Yankees pitcher of the same name. No escape.

You won’t see them at first glance, but Phil Hughes does indeed have windows. Kind of. They’re cubes of thick, frosted glass set high enough in the wall that they yield little light and are impossible to look through. There are TVs in Phil Hughes, too, but they’re small, dusty, cathode ray joints, and almost always tuned to horse racing simulcasts. Factor in the clientele – every night looks like an informal end-of-career-Richard Harris lookalike contest – and the vibe is something like Metallica’s video for “Unforgiven,” minus the Kirk Hammett axe solo/jheri curl. It’s basically depressing Metallica Video Old Guys trying to scratch through a wall and wondering how they came to be trapped in so bleak and hopeless a place. The sidewalk outside the bar smells like vinegar and cigarettes. That is where this game should be shown.

There and only there, because it fits the existential horror of this game and because the Metallica Video Old Guys won’t even notice, so intently are they staring into their beers and wondering where it all went wrong. While both of these teams have fans – the Raiders fans are the ones that look like they’re in Gwar, the Vikes fans are the ones who appear to be sculpted from butter – even they can’t be looking forward much to this match-up. The Raiders, after looking moderately sparky early in the season, are in free fall: unable to score points (they’re averaging 11.2 over their last five games), unable to find a quarterback better than Josh McCown, unable to keep anyone on their defense healthy. That’s still better than they were last year, when they were one of the most puzzlingly mis-coached and mismatched teams of the last decade, but it’s a long way from respectable.

Without star RB Adrian Peterson, whose torn knee ligament will sideline him for this game and several more to come, the Vikings aren’t exactly within hailing distance, either. Their current quarterback situation would be dramatically improved by the arrival of Josh McCown – who, if you didn’t get it from context back there, is a towheaded mess of a pick-tossing machine – or almost anyone else.

With erstwhile starting QB Tarvaris Jackson likely recovered enough from his concussion to play this week, we suppose it’s possible that Minnesota coach Brad Childress will indeed play him. There’s no statistical argument to be made for doing that – Jackson has “led” the Vikings 31st-ranked passing game by completing 51 of his 110 passes (that’s 46.4 percent) for 600 yards, 2 TDs and 5 INTs – but he might play anyway. More likely, the Vikings will stick to the ground game – RB Chester Taylor will inherit Peterson’s carries, and probably do a serviceable job against a weak Raiders run defense – and periodically let whoever’s playing quarterback wobble one out towards a sideline.

And the Raiders? Oh, you know, the usual: downfield incompletions. Even against the Vikings’ terrible pass defense, it’s hard to imagine McCown and Co. doing any damage. The Raiders have been one of the NFL’s better rushing teams all season (their offensive line is a rare bright spot), but it’s hard to imagine Justin Fargas – yeah, he’s the new feature back; Tyrone Wheatley apparently had other plans – doing much against a stout Vikings front line that has allowed just 75.9 yards rushing per game this season.

It’s hard to imagine anything, really, going right for either team at this point. Both teams have good offensive lines protecting terrible quarterbacks; both have defenses with major weak spots and some oddball strong suits (the Raiders’ secondary has been good all season, but both starting cornerbacks are on the injury report this week). Neither team should be watched at any cost. We’ll go with the purple guys – last week’s 34-0 loss to Green Bay aside, they’ve showed more signs of life recently than have the Raiders – but given the choice, we’d rather be at Phil Hughes. Watching the horseracing simulcast.

Vikings by 6