Balance: Raiders Must Find Winning Ways Soon
Once is a fluke, twice is a trend, and three times is a habit.
In back-to-back weeks, the Oakland Raiders defense needed to stop the opposition’s final drive. And in back-to-back weeks the Silver & Black failed — at home, no less.
Can Jack Del Rio’s defense avoid making that thrice with the 5-1 Kansas City Chiefs Oakland-bound for a Thursday night primetime tilt?
The cynic will say: “No way does that game come down to one final drive. Andy Reid is a master tactician and will formulate another magnificent game plan to confound Del Rio’s plans.”
But anything is possible, as we’ve seen in the last six weeks of the NFL season. While a myriad of issues plague the Raiders, balance is what the team needs most. There’s a terrible imbalance of time spent on the field offensively and defensively. Oakland’s offense is second-worst in average time of possession at 27:39. Only the Tampa Bay Bucs are worse at 27:36. The Raiders defense, on the other hand, has been on the field the third-most at 32:21. Only the Bucs’ (32:21) and San Francisco 49ers’ (35:14) defenses have seen the field more.
Throttling the needle to the middle on both ends will help drastically. Sustaining drives would build confidence and identity for the league’s 30th-ranked offense and provide the 23rd-ranked defense some crucial time to catch its breath.
Truth of the matter is Oakland has provided little evidence it can avoid the terrifying three-peat and habit.
This past Sunday’s inability to engineer a stop was exponentially deflating. Just look at the final score: Los Angeles Chargers 17, Oakland Raiders 16.
“We’re up by two, got them pinned back,” Del Rio said after Sunday’s debacle. “Marquette (King) was phenomenal today punting the ball, flipped the field a bunch. You get them pinned back; we have to get a stop. We didn’t get it done. They milked it, they won the game. They earned it.”
As Del Rio noted, the Raiders’ last stand started off as well as coach could hope.
Marquette King boomed a 58-yard punt, safety Erick Harris got downfield in a hurry for the tackle and Los Angeles was pinned at their own 8-yard line with 4:09 left on the clock. With lead in hand, it was the opportune time for the Raiders defense to pin its ears back and smack the lowly Chargers back to the cellar of the AFC West standings.
We all know how it ended: L.A. marched down field in expert fashion and drilled a 32-yard game-winning field goal as time expired.
If Oakland executed on its final drive of the game, gotten a first down and milked the clock, a different narrative would be told today.
“I saw an inability to line up properly, execute. We completed out for a chunk, it’s going to put us at second-and-short to start the drive. Instead we line up at first-and-15. That led to a three-and-out. That was a factor in us going three-and-out,” Del Rio said.
Balance. Without it, the Raiders are playing catch up with the rest of the league.
The Raiders are the tenants of last place in the division and sport the fourth-worst win-loss record in the league. And the high-powered Chiefs are gunning to make sure the Raiders remain at the bottom of the division.
