Riding high off a three-game win-streak, the Raiders sauntered into LA to face the Rams with a third string quarterback and Baker Mayfield who was signed two days before.
Things got going just as they had hoped and seemed to expect, with the Raiders driving for a touchdown on their opening drive. That drive featured a highlight reel one-handed grab by Davante Adams and finished with an 11-yard run by Jacobs off a pitch and they punched it in from one-yard out.
That would be their only touchdown drive of the game and it seemed like they thought they could move the ball enough against the Rams while the Rams wouldn’t be able to score on them. So, they got conservative.
They ran Josh Jacobs into the ground despite Jacobs getting held to 3.2 yards per carry in the first half.
In the third quarter, the Raiders were up 13-3. A touchdown likely would’ve put the game out of reach. But instead they went three-and-out twice, the first one opting to punt on 4th and one from the LA 49. That screams ‘we got this.’
“In a game like that, I thought the defense was playing well there was a couple fourth downs where field position was involved certainly,” said McDaniels after the game. “Made the decision to put it up 16-3 and not go for it on 4th and one.”
For most of the game, they were feeling pretty good about that game plan. You could see why that 16-3 fourth quarter lead might seem pretty secure. And had the ball fallen their way a few times, they may have been able to escape with that. But as it often happens, you play with fire and you might just get burned.
The Rams drove for a touchdown in the fourth quarter to make it a one-score game. And the Raiders still went out there like they had this one. Three-straight hand-offs and they were punting after taking just 1:19 off the clock and leaving the Rams with 2:00 to drive for the win.
The Rams got a lot to go their way to go 98 yards for the win. But that’s just how things go sometimes. The Raiders job was to put the game out of reach, so none of that would matter. And they didn’t do it.
“We’re just sick about it,” said Maxx Crosby. “It’s tough. We play good football for most of the game, but just didn’t close the game. And it’s happened before. It’s just unfortunate. We have work to do. Simple as that. It sucks because you’re in a game and you feel like you’ve done enough to finish it and then we just keep giving them chances. It’s just all self-inflicted s–t. So, that’s what makes it harder.”
Crosby is of course going to see the mistakes they made on defense as the issue. That’s the lens he looks through. He’s right that the defense played good football most of the game. And that two bad penalties on the final drive were killers. But it simply should not have come down to that.
“As a team we didn’t finish the game the right way,” said Derek Carr. “This is the NFL, it’s going to be close, it’s going to be tough sometimes. . . We left some plays out there and some points out there and then at the end of the game, I just don’t think we finished it how we could’ve finished it to win the game and not even have to put the defense out there like that.”
To Carr’s credit, he understands that the offense should not have put the defense in this position. And when asked, he put deferred to his head coach.
“I’m not sure. That’s a better question for Josh,” Carr said of Raiders conservative play calling. “Whatever’s called, we’re trying to execute it at a high level. There’s times where there’s runs and pass checks and different things based on looks that we get and things like that. Sometimes it can end up that way too. But for me personally, whatever Josh is calling, we’re just trying to execute that and make it happen.”
Josh McDaniels, on the other hand, took a different approach, opting not to see it as a problem with play calling or game plan, but rather flat out blaming the turnovers and penalties. Which is to say, Derek Carr’s interception in the end zone and Jerry Tillery’s unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on the final drive.
“We got off to a decent start and we didn’t capitalize,” said McDaniels. “The bottom line is until we figure out how to stop losing games with mistakes that we do ourselves, then it makes it very difficult to win. You can’t win until you stop losing and that’s penalties, turnovers, things like that that contribute to that. We’ve talked a lot about that and we obviously need to do a better job of coaching it and trying to get us to play better.”
The Raiders could’ve come in and used the energy and momentum they had built in the big win over the Chargers last week and ran the Rams out of the building. But instead they got high on their own supply and paid the price for it.
Even with the Rams having lost six-straight coming in on a short week with a quarterback that literally had 20 plays he ran in practice this week, this is still an NFL game against NFL players. They can’t be taken lightly and you can never try and skate your way to escaping with a win. It just doesn’t work that way.
It makes it all the more ironic that Maxx Crosby was supposedly quoting Josh McDaniels when he gave the most poynent quote of the night.
“You got to treat every single play like it’s the end of the game, like it’s the most important play on the planet,” Crosby said. “You can’t take your foot off the gas just because it’s the second quarter and it’s second-and-five. It’s got to be the same every play. You just got to have 53 guys doing that and on the same page and tonight we didn’t do that.”
