Why Nathan Peterman signing actually can be good for Raiders fans

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Has everybody had their good time making fun of Nathan Peterman signing with the Raiders? You sure? You’re all done sniggering, laughing and breaking into teary-eyed coughing fits?
 
Good. Now, let me give you the scenario under which Peterman is a great idea, if not necessarily for the Raiders, then for Raider fans.
 
As we know from our internetting, Jon Gruden was a big Peterman guy even before he was drafted; he said so on his ESPN coaches/blowhard show. And that’s fine. Everyone gets to have an opinion.
 
But now that he is part of the Raiders’ practice squad, we can use him as the best litmus test to date for Gruden himself.
 
No, no, hear me out on this. It isn’t quite as stupid as it seems, though I will admit that it’s close.
 
Peterman gets a crash course in the Oakland offense this week. Peterman is named the starter for Week 17 at Kansas City, in a nothing-to-lose game against a team ranked 27th in total defense by Football Outsiders. He does well, or he does not, and the result of the game doesn’t matter unless in some bizarre alternate universe merging with our own the Raiders actually win.
 
That information can then be applied to the fan base’s decision on whether to (a) care whether the Raiders play in Oakland next year or not, and (b) if they do play in Oakland, whether or not to waste another year on season tickets.
 
You see, it’s not the football we’re interested in so much as the customer service.
 
If Peterman looks good in a low-stakes game against a non-proficient defensive team, fans can then credit Gruden for seeing things in Peterman that maybe the Buffalo Bills missed and then commit to one more year of paying attention but before the grand separation.
 
But if he looks like the man who advanced the science of interceptions, then the fans can look at Gruden with re-jaundiced eyes, decide that he really is out of the loop viz. reality, and can make a more informed decision about whether to give a scintilla of a damn about this team next year.
 
Seems like the best reason possible to sign the man, I’d say.
 
Gruden, you see, has operated as the team’s general manager and coach on the theory that the location of the team is irrelevant to his long-term job, which it is. Thus, he doesn’t have to look after the psychic care and feeding of the customers, because they’re clearly not down for what they’ve been given this year, or last, or 2015 back through the beginning of the millennium. He has his job, the fans have theirs.
 
But since he has seen to fit to back up his TV-persona opinion of Peterman by throwing some of Mark Davis’ money at him, it seems reasonable to test his judgment for the good of the supporters. True, it may be a small sample size, but if Peterman was to play (which he almost certainly isn’t) and comes out even three-quarters as good as, say, Nick Mullens, then true believers can point to him and say, “See? Gruden knows his onions. You have mocked him unfairly, and I shun you.”
 
Or something akin to that.
 
But if Peterman reinforces the planet’s opinion of the job he has done since leaving Tennessee in 2016 by helping the Chiefs turn a potential rout into a mega-rout, then the appropriate assumptions about Gruden’s fitness as a talent evaluator will be advanced, and opinions will have been buttressed by fact.
 
Kind of, anyway. We’re stretching a point beyond its elasticity to see if anyone will be paying attention to the last game of the actual season, since we’re not entirely sure that they’ll be paying attention this coming Monday.
 
Frankly, it’s the least he could do – to give us some tape to evaluate him, for a change.
 
Sadly, though, the least they can do has always been a price too high for the Raiders to pay, which is part of how they got into this predicament in the first place. Peterman won’t see the field except in an emergency, and all the excuses usually lavished on players in this situation will be spent on him, and that’s if he plays at all.
 
But it’s worth a shot. Oakland demands Nathan Peterman, just to see what parts of Nathan Peterman Gruden knows that all the other people who saw Nathan Peterman do not. The fan bases in Oakland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and across the globe deserve a chance to better evaluate not the practice squad quarterback but the man who signed him.
 
I rest my case. Now back to that vat of gin we’ve been working on.

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