A skunk ruining the Raiders locker room is a perfect metaphor for the start of their season

The beginning of September hasn’t been great for the Oakland Raiders.

It started with a trade of their best player, Khalil Mack, to the Chicago Bears after a lengthy holdout due to his contract demands. Mack immediately got a $142 million contract and put together one of the most dominant defensive halves ever in his Chicago debut.

Then the Jon Gruden era officially kicked off with a 33-13 loss to the Rams on Monday Night Football that saw Derek Carr continue to show signs of regression.

Now the Raiders locker room stinks. Literally.

Whew, that’s a metaphor if there ever was one.

Gruden joked that the skunk — which devastated the locker room at some point during the game Monday night — was what “screwed us up a little” in the second half.

How a skunk got into the Raiders locker room is a mystery unsolved. Nobody caught, or apparently even saw, the culprit.

It’s not unprecedented, though. There’s a long history of bunnies, foxes, squirrels, cats, dogs, and other critters making their way on to football fields during games. So it’s not that weird that a skunk could find its way to the locker room.

The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum — which also serves as the home of MLB’s Oakland Athletics — has a history of flooding with raw sewage. Relatively speaking, a skunk attack isn’t that bad.

But Gruden’s tenure in his return to the Raiders is off to a stinky start.