Oakland Raiders: Preseason Games, Home Cooking?

For those of you who don't care about the pre-season, injuries or seeing players who may never make it with the team, you might want to flip over to another article for the time being.

For the rest of the fans, the NFL announced this year's preseason fixtures and locations, and Oakland should have some fun.

For all four games, they'll be in the same time zone, three of them near Oakland, and one should give us some help in the regular season.

First up, will be in Oakland against the Dallas Cowboys, who are presently working out the bugs now that Terrell Owens has been ditched.

Also out for the Cowboys is Roy Williams, who was mentioned as a possible pickup for the Raiders.

This game could be interesting, as both clubs will meet during the regular season on Thanksgiving Day. For Oakland, it'll be a change—they haven't played on Thanksgiving since 1970.

The second game will be another dose of Battle of the Bay, with the Raiders and the 49ers meeting again.

While this game will not mean anything in the standings, the winner will claim bragging rights. By this game, we should have some idea about the rookies, but you can get false impressions from strong performances against third tier players.

Third game, we get to welcome back Drew Brees and his New Orleans Saints to Oakland.

Last year we got a very ugly game. I have no idea if Brees will play, or for safety reasons, will be kept on the bench. We'll also get a chance to show Payton what he missed by not signing with the Raiders, as the fans should be nice and loud.

Lastly, I wonder if someone in the scheduling department thinks the Seahawks are still in the AFC West, because, yet again, we wrap up our preseason with a trip to Seattle.

Although we no longer have to deal with the likes of Shaun Alexander, the 'Hawks fans are quite irritable and anti-social.

They seem to still be smarting from all those seasons of coming up short. Hey, it's only a pre-season game, after all.

I won't put out guesses on winning or losing these games, as we could have a great pre-season, like in 2006, and then self-destruct in the regular season.

One simple request after last year; don't get hurt out there guys. We lost too many key players early.