Need good news about Raiders and 49ers? The Warriors start on Tuesday

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Well, that football season came and went pretty quickly.

As we enter Week 7 (and look in the rear view mirror at Weeks 1-6 with disdain and nausea), we have an 0-6 team in San Francisco shedding veterans and imitating the Los Angeles Chargers for their ability to vomit up close game, and a 2-4 team in Oakland which just lost a close game to the Chargers.

Hurray. The Warriors start Tuesday.

The 49ers lost again, this time in Washington, 26-24, and are now historically eliminated from the postseason, as only one 0-4 team – the 1992 Chargers – have ever reached the postseason. That is not a surprise, nor any enduring disappointment. The 49ers work hard and do not quit, but they are not yet qualified to figure out how to win – close or any other kind of games. They are in the process of de-building, which is stripping the house down to its studs and rebuilding, and losses like Sunday’s are well within acceptable norms.

But the Raiders also lost Sunday, at home to the ridiculous Chargers, 17-16, and their chances of making the playoffs are now a paltry 9.5 percent (it has happened 22 of 231 times since the season was extended to 16 games in 1978).

In other words, if you are a loyal front-runner, you have the Warriors and Stanford football. You have St. Mary’s basketball and Stanford women’s basketball. And then you’ve got a lot of hope-for-the-best, abandon-all-hope, and despair drinking.

This is not how it was plotted, of course. The Raiders were supposed to contend, and Marshawn Lynch was supposed to channel the powers of Oaktown in that pursuit. But no, they are currently tied for 29th in the overall standings, and Oakland’s power to effect change are in serious jeopardy.

Now they host Kansas City Thursday, whose attention to detail was re-inspired by losing at home to Pittsburgh. If the Raiders have the get-up-and-go Jack Del Rio keeps saying they do, the time for getting up and going has, well, damned near already passed.

But it helps get through the week at the water cooler, C.J. Beathard had a better quarterback rating than Derek Carr. Go have a fistfight in the lunch room over that.

And remember, the Warriors start Tuesday.

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