If it were possible for me to feel sympathy for the Oakland Raiders, and it is not, I might feel bad about what has happened to them.

And what is about to happen to them.

They were one of the big surprises in the NFL this season, along with the Dallas Cowboys.

The Raiders were 11-3, and 12 minutes from 12-3, when the key man in their first winning record in 14 (!) seasons, quarterback Derek Carr, suffered a broken leg as he was sacked.

They were leading the Indianapolis Colts 33-14 at the time, and hung on to win 33-25 and secure a playoffs berth.

But the loss of Carr was a disaster. And it got worse.

Matt McGloin, the Raiders’ backup quarterback, finished the victory over the Colts and started the final game of the season, against Denver, but he went out in the first quarter with a shoulder injury and will not play Saturday in the wild-card round of the playoffs, at Houston.

(The Raiders lost the Denver game to finish 12-4, missing a chance to win the AFC West and dropping into a wild-card berth behind the Kansas City Chiefs.)

That leaves the Raiders with … rookie quarterback Connor Cook, who had not played in an NFL game till he came on for McGloin last weekend (and was not horrible).

But Cook is about to become the first quarterback to make his debut as a starter … in the playoffs.

Well, congrats on that nice regular season.

It’s hard enough to win in the playoffs with a mediocre QB, let alone with a quarterback whose last start was for Michigan State in a 38-0 NCAA playoffs loss to Alabama last season.

These are bad breaks for Jack Del Rio, former USC linebacker, who is in his second year of coaching the Raiders, and doing well at it.

I’ve always liked him, in part for the Trojans thing, in part because when he was the coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars he wore a suit on the sidelines of a game, channeling his inner Tom Landry, classing up the joint, and the NFL objected because all coaches were supposed to wear Reebok gear.

But since Del Rio coaches the Raiders … well, Jack, you’re on your own.

My issues with the Raiders began with oddball owner Al Davis and his embrace of a “bad boys” reputation while in Oakland, where the Raiders became the unofficial team of bikers everywhere.

The Raiders brought that unsavory stuff with them when they moved to Los Angeles in 1982, thoroughly dominating the gangster demographic (they loved the silver-and-black scheme), and drawing a set of undesirables to the L.A. Coliseum.

Then they returned to Oakland, one of the nation’s most benighted cities, after 13 seasons in L.A., for a nice lump-sum payment (which was spent a long, long time ago) … and now the team is anxious to get out of O-Town, probably to Las Vegas starting next fall.

A sensible person cannot root for the Raiders. You just can’t.

Even when their 2016 dream season falls to pieces in 2017 with their top two quarterbacks going down just ahead of the playoffs.