WEEI.com’s eminent Mike Felger, he of the carpet-bagging, cheese-eating, Wisconsin-bred Felgers, wrote of the Patriots the other day in his team report card:

“Thank God they’re playing the Raiders this week.”

From 2003 to 2007, I might have agreed. This year? Well, let’s file Felger’s sentiment (and the similar feelings of Patriots fans) under “be careful what you wish for.”

Oh, sure, the Patriots are still a better team. The records alone say it all. The Patriots are 8-5 and tied for first in the uber-competitive AFC East. The Raiders are 3-10 and just one game out of the basement in the uncompetitive red-headed stepchild of a division known as the AFC West.

The Patriots should win.

In fact, if the Patriots lose, it will embarrass the Patriots, their fans, the entire Northeastern corner of the United States … and maybe even a few of the seamier districts of London, which will host a Patriots game next year.

But considering the divergent paths the New England and Oakland organizations have taken since the Snow Bowl nearly seven years ago, victory this weekend is not the open-and-shut case some would make it out to be – nor is it the open-and-shut case it should be. (Lest we forget, the Patriots barely beat a terrible Seattle team on Sunday.)

In fact, the Raiders – as awful an organization as they have been here in the sunset years of Al Davis – are actually better than the Patriots in a number of areas, especially on defense.

Over at ColdHardFootballFacts.com, we measure teams defensively a number of different ways. Believe it or not, the Raiders are better than the Patriots in every single statistical indicator we have for defense.

Bendability Index – This is our measure of defensive efficiency. Essentially, it’s the only stat in the seedy underworld of online gridiron analysis that quantifies the “bend but don’t break” phenomenon and tells you how a defense is working in relation to a team’s other units. Bendability has been a Patriots specialty under Bill Belichick. But not this year:

• The Raiders rank 12th in Bendability
• The Patriots rank 14th in Bendability

Verdict: Oakland’s defense makes opponents work harder for points than does New England’s defense.

Defensive Hog Index – Pigskin “pundits” love to compare offensive and defensive fronts. But usually their opinions are nothing more than useless speculation based upon unreliable anecdotal evidence. We quantify the performances of these units statistically in our Hog Indices.

• The Raiders rank 21st in our Defensive Hog Index
• The Patriots rank 22nd in our Defensive Hog Index

Verdict: The dirty little secret about the 2008 Patriots is that their widely praised defensive front, and all its No. 1 picks, are a liability this year – not even as good as Oakland’s anonymous and unheralded defensive front.

Defensive Passer Rating – Over at CHFF, we don’t measure defenses by total yards, the typical indicator used by so-called “analysts” to rate defenses. For reasons too many to enumerate here, yards allowed is virtually useless when it comes to measuring the actual performance of a pass defense. So we use Defensive Passer Rating.

• The Raiders rank 11th in Defensive Passer Rating
• The Patriots ranks 27th in Defensive Passer Rating

Verdict: It’s an embarrassing indictment of the Patriots and the organization’s personnel management when Al Davis puts a much better pass defense on the field.

There is one area where the Patriots are better than the Raiders defensively – and it’s the most important indicator: the Patriots have surrendered 276 points, while the Raiders have surrendered 299.

But defenses don’t play in a vacuum. Their success is intricately intertwined with the success of the offense and special teams units.

And the Raiders defense is burdened by a deadweight cinder block that is one of the worst offenses in the league – and one of the worst offenses in the entire history of the Raiders organization.

Oakland’s inept offense makes life very hard on the rather viable Oakland defense. The Raiders offense:

• Can’t move the ball through the air (a pathetic 4.7 yards per dropback, 31st in the NFL)
• Can’t convert third downs (24.7 percent, 32nd)
• Can’t score (a paltry 13.8 PPG, 30th).

As a result, the Oakland offense constantly puts the Oakland defense on, well, the defensive.

If the sieve-like New England defense was paired with an offense as bad as Oakland’s, the Patriots would easily be among the very worst in the league defensively and would probably sport a similar 3-10 record.

Instead, the Patriots defense has the luxury of playing with a fairly solid if unspectacular offense, and it’s this offense that separates the playoff-worthy Patriots from the sludge-sucking bottom feeders like the Raiders.

New England’s entire 2008 season was given a mulligan as soon as Tom Brady went down in Week 1. But interestingly, it’s not the offense that has let the team down in the wake of the most catastrophic injury in NFL history.

Instead, it’s the defense that has let the team down in the wake of the injury – a unit that’s not even as good this year as the anonymous 11 fielded by the laughing-stock Oakland franchise.

Kerry J. Byrne is the publisher of ColdHardFootballFacts.com . His self-congratulatory column will appear here each Wednesday during football season. Send fawning praise, death threats or pictures of your 19-year-old sister to contact@coldhardfootballfacts.com.