The Raiders are a whole new household this year.

Mr. Davis is dead, long live Mr. Davis.

Coach Dennis Allen will debut at the helm of our sailing ship full of Raiders tonight at the Coliseum and I couldn’t be more excited.

My household is also new and improved. With a year left on my contract to produce local television news, I retired to produce my local household instead.

The kids are back to school, and I’m learning a host of new things. For one, my ShopVac is a more powerful cleaning tool that the silly stand up Vacuum that lived in the closet. I feel so strongly about the ShopVac’s dominance in cleaning all messes that I have given away the Dirt Devil.

I’ve also learned that it’s easier to roast a tri tip than grill it. Being Mr. Mom is pretty awesome.

But coaching my own team has left me slightly out of touch with the one that will jog out onto the field in a few hours in Oakland.

What have these Raiders learned? Have they learned that a defense built around Rolando McClain is a bad idea?

Ice Cube is going to release a new Raiders anthem at the game tonight, and unless this is a Matt Millen jersey, he’s one of those Raiders fans who believe that McClain’s tackle totals from last season signify his competence at the position. They are wrong.

Have these Raiders learned that they must finish games and have focus in the fourth quarter?

A lot of attention has been given to the blooming bromance in New York between Mark Sanchez and Tim Tebow. But we’ve got one of our own between USC alumns Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart.

I’m hoping against hope that this Carson Palmer is actually a Calmer Parson — a field general interested in parsing defenses into bite-sized chunks that will be easily digested by DHB and the talented Mr. Moore — and won’t make the sort of juvenile excuses he made after his debut last season if he doesn’t.

I feel like I have no idea how this game is going to end, and that’s a good and bad feeling. I’ve been on so many rides with this team over the last decade, that this feels a lot like picking up a family member from prison after a good two years in the clink. This postseason drought has been the stint in prison after so many overnight drunk tank holds and weekends in the county jail. But have the lessons really been learned this time?

Mr. Davis is gone, and he won’t be there to blame if the new braintrust’s culture change isn’t for real.

There should be no Bill Callahan, a head coach so foolish that he didn’t change the audible signals set by the previous head coach who he happened to be facing in the Super Bowl.

There is no Barrett Robbins to have a nervous breakdown the night before that Super Bowl.

There is no snow on the field, and this ain’t the tuck game.

That isn’t Bruce Almighty at the quarterback, there is no Kerry Collins to be seen.

This should be a new beginning. I’m going to do my best to forget about the very real pain of the last decade, and all the bad decisions, terrible play, and stupid penalties that came with it.

Change is possible, you know.

I used to be obsessed with furthering my small-town media career to the detriment of my wife and children. They actually came in second place during that same decade of Raider futility. But we are all trying to turn it around and make up for lost time.

Something tells me that if we are successful, it’ll be easy to forget those last ten years where we didn’t have the right priorities.

Replacement refs aside, I hope we play a clean game and make good decisions.

I hope they look like professionals in victory or defeat.

I’m not going to make predictions, clearly this is a soft posting full of maudlin emotions and low on hard stats and facts.

But hope runs strong right now, and it just seems like numbers, spreads, and defensive schemes run a long second place to the possibility of professional play and a new look Silver and Black.