Brooks gives us reasons to believe

The above linked article is a column in the S.F. Chronicle

I liked it but...

The writer is mistaken about 1 thing. The Raiders don't control the scheduling of preseason games, the league does.

Teams used to be in control of this process until a few years ago which was why you always saw certain teams play other teams every preseason. Oakland and Dallas for example.

So saying that the Raiders purposely scheduled sucky teams to play in the preseason gives them too much credit. Besides, how then would you account for the NFC champions being the last team on the schedule?