Oh, Richard Seymour. I didn't know you were such a starry-eyed optimist.

During an interview on a Cincinnati radio show before a Week Seven game, Seymour, who was traded in September from the Patriots to the Raiders for a 2011 first-round pick, made the boldest of predictions. He said the unthinkable would happen.

"You can mark it down," he said, "the Raiders will be in the playoffs. The Raiders are going to the playoffs."

Ha. Cue the Jim Mora clip and restore your jaw to its normal position. Absurd. Right?

These are the 2-5 Raiders — a team that hasn't won more than five games in a season since 2002. They have scored an AFC-low 62 points, and their quarterback doesn't seem to have much of a clue as to what he's doing on most Sundays.

Predicting the Raiders to get to the playoffs — that's almost as crazy as predicting the Broncos to start the season 6-0. It's about as delusional as forecasting the Titans, who went an AFC-best 13-3 last year, to drop their first six games of the season, leaving a distraught head coach Jeff Fisher to wear a Peyton Manning jersey in public so he can remind himself of what it feels like to be a winner.

Those things were never supposed to happen — Denver was, in my opinion, going to be a nonfactor in its conference, and Tennessee was on its way to competing with the Colts for the AFC South title — but they are unlikely realities as we close in on the midway point of the 2009 campaign. The stunning starts of the Broncos and Titans haven't completely shattered my confidence when it comes to peering into the future. Everyone gets a few preseason predictions wrong. The parity of the NFL is what makes it exciting and fresh from season to season.

But I was so entirely wrong in the preseason predictions for the fates those two clubs were destined for that I find myself hesitating to dismiss notions that sound as out-of-the-box as Seymour's postseason guarantee. Turnarounds can, and do, happen.

Give Seymour some credit for at least attempting to instill confidence and swagger in an organization that has been stuck in the doldrums for the past six years. Hope, even if it's false, can't hurt.

The Raiders' schedule in the final nine games is favorable: at San Diego, Kansas City, Cincinnati, at Dallas, at Pittsburgh, Washington, at Denver, at Cleveland, Baltimore. Only four of those teams are above .500. Oakland isn't going to unseat the Broncos as leaders in the AFC West, but it could somehow sneak into a wild-card spot, since no team is close to running away with the No. 6 seed in the AFC.

I don't think Oakland is headed back to the playoffs, and an awful Week Seven performance in a 38-0 loss to the Jets restored my belief that I have a solid sense of reality. But I won't completely bury Seymour and his high hopes.

Perhaps I shouldn't allow the Broncos and Titans to cloud my judgment about other teams. Just shake it off. The thought of JaMarcus Russell throwing passes in the playoffs is too surreal, and I've been writing that the Raiders are one step short of pathetic for too long to turn back now. Aside from Week Six, they've looked like a train wreck.

You know, kind of like how the Broncos were supposed to look. 

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