While the man inarguably does his research, we must assume that Al Michaels did not read this story when it ran two and a half weeks ago. If he had, he would have called in sick for Thursday night's Raiders-Broncos game, and so might have spared himself having to call one of the worst events ever presented by upright mammals. And when we say "events," we mean "things watched by other people"—sporting contests, sure, but also television, movies, films, concerts, art exhibits, circuses, operas, mime, busking on the boardwalk, all the way down to battlefield operating theaters. Think of the worst karaoke rendition you have ever heard, only with some helium-huffing involved. Think of Civil War-era trauma medicine. It was worse than that.
Because Michaels is a professional, his preparation for a game likely does not include painfully accurate blogs roasting the Raiders on a worker-owned sports website. But it's hard to think of anything that might better have prepared him for Thursday's 10-7 Broncos unloss (to call it a win is far too generous) over the Raiders; it was a game so dire that it moved Comrade Anantharaman's pungent analysis of a previous brutal Raiders game from "well-aimed snark" to "unsettling prescience." Thursday's game was so unspeakably wretched on both sides that we left thinking that we might have been guilty of both eviscerating the Raiders too soon, and ignoring the Broncos' rich fraudulence too long. Put another way, when our decorated comrade wrote about a Raiders loss in which they gained 95 total yards and lost 31-0, she got the better game.
Fortunately, there was Al, America's Unelected Conscience, using the tone of his voice to make America's opinion felt. Every time he let the game breathe without narration for a moment, it was easy to imagine him flipping off the field with both hands, and with enough zeal to make his arms cramp in backlogged rage. More than that, every time Kirk Herbstreit tried to extol some arcane and imagined competence by either team, we could imagine Al screaming into a muted mic, "Fuck everyone associated with either team! Fuck every coach, official, fan and viewer for tolerating this gangrenous shitslide! I hate you all with the white hot power of a magnetar!" But like we said, he's a professional, and he as such kept his disgust barely muted. But only barely.
We could point you to the box score and give you all the numbers you want to explain this utterly leprous nightmare; the fact that the game featured more penalties than first downs is as good a place to start as any. But all you really need in order to understand what was wrong about this is to listen to Al's subtle shadings of comprehensive disgust, or observe Geno Smith's rapidly progressing limp. The numbers undersell it. Because nothing speaks quite like the written word, this how the game's 26 drives ended:
Punt.
Punt.
The Raiders touchdown, on an Ashton Jeanty four-yard run.
Punt.
Punt.
Punt.
Punt.
Punt.
Four-and-out.
The Denver touchdown, Bo Nix to Troy Franklin from seven yards out.
Punt.
Interception.
A three-play, two-yard Raiders drive that ended with halftime; none of the Amazon analysts chose to quit on the spot despite the interminable halftime show offering plenty of opportunity.
Punt.
Punt.
Missed field goal.
Interception.
Punt.
Blocked punt.
Field goal, Denver, a 32-yarder that followed a three-play drive that went minus-two yards, incomplete pass, zero yards.
Punt.
Punt.
Punt.
Interception.
Missed field goal.
End of game.
It was the third-lowest scoring game in contemporary Thursday Night Football history (there were a bunch of Thursday games in the 1930s that all seemed to end 0-0), and featured the third-fewest combined yards. It was an inertial Carnaval, the zenith of nadirs. A grim whirlwind of a Broncos team that has turned their essential mediocrity into both public confessions of inadequacy and an 8-2 record conspired with the Raiders' demonstrable and repeatable rancidity to create a three-hour parole hearing in which everyone on both sides of the table ended up with more hard time.
More to the point, the game combined to explain the state of the NFL in 2025. The good teams can't prove it week to week, and the bad ones have been bad for so long that the idea of "worse" has become almost incomprehensible. It's hard to know who to be more offended by: the Broncos for doing so little against a team that offers up so much opportunity, or the Raiders for being the same tired hamster on the same rusty wheel. Or maybe it's the NFL for shorting Amazon on one game, or Amazon for pretending that this game was worth your attention, or Al Michaels' time.
But then there's the more existential rebuttal, which is "What did you expect?" It's not like we deserve good entertainment as a function of tuning in. Some matchups scream "Don't look at me!" and it is every person's duty to take care of our time as best we can. Raiders-Broncos had no business being good, and wasn't. That it missed the minimum standard by as much as it did simply proves what we should already have deduced, which is that these are two spectacularly inadequate entertainment vehicles. The amazement is not that a game pitting the two against each other turbosucked with such remarkable PSI, it's that Denver has the best record in football while being exactly the sort of team that would deliver this sort of anti-entertainment. The Raiders aren't the problem here—they are exactly what Comrade Anantharaman said they were, and have been for decades. It's more the idea that the team with the good record cannot overcome the Raiders' gravitational pull. The Broncos have their issues, and getting goaded into a Raiders-off by the masters of the form demonstrated how deep those go.
Still, it was a pleasure to observe Al Michaels working in subliminal mode, trying to subtly broadcast that he knew what we were all watching and was equally bewildered as to why we were doing so. Michaels may not have been doing that, but one could still pick up between the frequencies a coded message: "I know, I know. I apologize unreservedly for my role in this. I see what you see, only with more monitors and replays on every one play, plus there's some jackwagon in my ear telling me it'll get better, even though we both know it won't. What do you want me to do about it, do 15 minutes on Herbstreit's dog?" Oh, also: Al never bothered to mention this fact, but he would surely like you to know that the Raiders covered the 8.5. Like we said, he's a pro.
