The old Raider mystique is dead. “Just Win, Baby” got lost over 13 seasons of playoff famine, twice the Biblical allotment of suffering for a Pharaoh’s people. The Raiders still wear silver and black jerseys, but the renegades inside them who won three Super Bowls in a previous generation live on in memory only.
Now there is a new spirit in a new era, with fresh-face leadership, and soon we will learn how it compares to the one that is long gone, in the fairly important category of winning huge games.
Tom Flores, the coach of two of those Super Bowl championship teams – vintages 1980 and ’83 – thinks the real test for this year’s 10-2 group starts Thursday night, when the Raiders travel to Kansas City, Mo.