Let’s fire up the gameday thread. Two articles from this week of note in preparation of Sunday Night Football:

• At 538, is the Broncos pass D better than ever?

• At 538, are the Raiders penalties part of the reason for the team’s success?

Tonight’s game should be really fun to watch, if nothing else because it’s cool to see both of these teams playing well at the same time. In Elo ratings parlance, 1500 is the rating of an average team. Well, this is the first time since 2003 that both the Raiders and Broncos are above-average in Elo ratings.

That’s crazy, although largely because of Oakland’s below-average play. Just once, in 2011, was Oakland above 1500 and Denver below 1500. The graph below shows the Elo ratings for both teams entering all Raiders/Broncos games since 1960, along with the average rating of the two teams. It includes tonight’s game as the last data point:

This is easily the most anticipated/best Raiders/Broncos game since a Monday night meeting between the teams in 2003. Anyway, leave your thoughts and football observations below.