Oakland Raiders Can Make Our Day with a 2-0 for Week 2: Shock the Buffalo Bills

One writer said that the Buffalo Bills are all "juiced up" for Week 2, and he seemed to be leaning in their direction. Juiced up or not, the Oakland Raiders are going to be all "fired up," and that will evaporate the "juice" the Bills may try to bring to the game.

Now, if you look at the data, you see that in 2000, 2001 and 2002, the Oakland Raiders had started 2-0 during those years. More recently, however, the Raiders have had a 1-1 record in Week 2, and that fact alone has fired up both the coaches and the team to change the pattern.

In 2010, the Raiders started 1-1, while the Bills started 0-2.

Another way to look at some indicators, although I admit they are not the strongest indicators for predicting who will appear in playoffs: three out of the past ten seasons the Oakland Raiders have started 2-0. Similarly, the Bills have had a 2-0 record three out of ten times.

The difference is that the Bills accomplishments of 2-0 at Week 2 are spread over these specific years: 2000, 2003 and 2008.

Oakland was able to get to 2-0 three consecutive years from 2000 to 2002.

The Green Bay Packers and the New Orleans Saints both made playoff appearances in 2010 and both had a 2-0 record in Week 2 in 2010.

A writer named Chase Stuart made reference to the SRS for Oakland which, he said, was better than that of the Buffalo Bills. The SRS is a measure of team quality relative to the average SRS, which is determined by an MoV (margin of victory) plus SoS (strength of schedule) score.

Oakland's 2010 SRS is 0.2 and the Bills' is -4.6.

If we compare those scores with the Super Bowl winner in 2010, we see that Green Bay has much higher scores in these categories. I conjecture that the Raiders and the Bills have a lot of room for growth.

The numbers are an objective way to compare the teams, but we admit that the immeasurables and intangibles can and do make a difference.

While the Bills may be juiced up to win, we firmly believe that Hue Jackson and the Oakland Raiders are "fired up" to win. Can you fight fire with "juice." No, in my opinion. Conversely, can you fight juice with fire? Yes.

The Oakland Raiders can defeat the Buffalo Bills. Do you believe it?