Raiders Week 11 Slay and Bomb

For this week 11 slay and bomb article, there are a lot of Raiders to commend but also a lot of Raiders who didn’t quite show up.

It’s the first loss of the Antonio Pierce era. The offense looked lost out on the field as if they had regressed back to the Josh McDaniels era. Aidan O’Connell played like a rookie aside from one pass, and the play calling was hard to watch. The defense however managed to hold a Dolphins offense that scored 70 points on the Denver Broncos to just 20.

With the Broncos winning on Sunday Night Football and the Raiders losing on Sunday, the Raiders move down to 3rd place in the AFC West. A division that sees Kansas City and their Swifties comfortably ahead in 1st place while the rest of the division battles each other for 2nd place.

The team wasn’t deterred after the loss. Hunter Renfrow for example after the game said he expects this loss to bring the team closer together. It was also great seeing Renfrow with his biggest reception of the season during the game as he caught a pass and went for 31 yards.

What sank the team really was the 3 interceptions by O’Connell, coupled with a completely conservative game plan. You aren’t going to win a lot of games when your rookie quarterback throws 3 interceptions and you only put up 6 points off of turnovers.

All things considered, the Raiders usually struggle in 10 am Pacific games on the East Coast, especially against a front-runner like Miami. Instead, their defense held the number 1 offense in the league to 20 points and was impressive. They’ll all get their due here in the week 11 slay and bomb article.

Let’s get into the week 11 slay and bomb article.

Slay

The Raiders Defense Forcing Turnovers

The Raiders defense had arguably their best performance of the season against their toughest assignment. This is a Dolphins offense that ranks number 1 in scoring in the NFL. They put up 70 points on a Broncos team that the Raiders beat 17-16 this season, and who at the time of this writing has won 3 games in a row while forcing 3 turnovers in each of those 3 games.

You had a feeling the Raiders’ defense came to play when they forced and recovered a fumble on the Dolphins’ first drive of the game. They managed to hold the Dolphins offense to 20 points. Given how the offense couldn’t do anything, there was a lot of pressure on the defense. They managed to rise up to the college.

They went on to force 3 turnovers during the course of the game, with Isaiah Pola-Mao getting an interception. In addition, Marcus Epps and Divine Deablo forced fumbles.

The Raiders defense showed up to play and had a solid team performance. It’s hard to highlight just one player because everybody made a solid effort out there on Sunday. Everybody from Maxx Crosby to Isaiah Pola-Mao deserves to get highlighted for doing a great job against the number 1 offense in the league.

Hunter Renfrow

“3rd and Renfrow” is back in action in the Raiders offensive attack. 5 catches for 42 yards on Sunday all were season highs for Renfrow.

One of the highlights of the game had to be when Renfrow went for 31 yards. It gave Raiders fans a flashback to the 2021 season when Renfrow had 103 catches on his way to the Pro Bowl.

The Raiders needed Renfrow to get going because most of the rest of the offense seemed to be locked in neutral. Davante Adams popped off, but I felt as though Renfrow deserved to get the shine here.

Given all that Renfrow has gone through this season, he deserved this. He’s been through a lot this season, going from Pro Bowler to trade target that nobody wanted. He’s a fan favorite and a major producer. The offense needs to keep getting Renfrow going if they want to unlock the team’s full potential.

Bomb

Aidan O’Connell

The rookie struggles came and never quite left this Sunday. “AOC” managed to throw 3 interceptions on the day. Either he would have no time to throw and would panic and just throw the ball away, or he would get so much time that he couldn’t decide who to throw the football to.

Either way, it usually didn’t result in a lot of positive results for the Silver and Black. For the second time this season, O’Connell threw a game-losing interception, this time to Jalen Ramsey.  Ramsey ended up with 2 interceptions on the day because O’Connell trusted 4th string rookie receiver Tre Tucker to come away with the football in one-on-one matchups with the future Hall of Famer. Not a great idea, the only guy I think I would’ve trusted against Ramsay would have been Adams.

Rookie growing pains are to be expected and O’Connell was looking to become the first Raiders rookie quarterback to start off 3-1 as a starter. He’s instead 2-2 on the year and I still think he is the best option to win games given that the other 2 options are Jimmy Garoppolo and Brian Hoyer.

His TD-INT ratio for the season is 3 touchdowns to 6 interceptions, and he’s had 3 fumbles with 2 of them lost. He also has a rushing touchdown on the season. That’s 8 turnovers vs 4 touchdowns. I’m all for giving the rookie the rest of this season just to see what you have. But if he doesn’t step up his level of play, even with a playoff run I think the team has to consider all options at the starting quarterback position this offseason.

Bo Hardegree

What a difference a week makes. Offensive coordinator Bo Hardegree was in last week’s article as having a slay performance. This week, the offensive coordinator called a rough game.

The problem was that the team was way too conservative. In the first half, it seemed like every play the team would either run the football up the middle or throw a screen pass behind the line of scrimmage. The only time the offense deviated from that strategy, it resulted in a deep pass that ended with a Davante Adams touchdown.

In the second half, they still just never got going. For 2 quarters during Sunday’s game, the Raiders offense didn’t pick up a single first time. That is in spite of the Raiders defense forcing 3 turnovers. When your defense is absolutely dominating the other team’s offense and is getting you the football, you have to execute on offense and get some points. Instead, the Raiders offense netted the team 2 field goals.

The playcalling needs to open up a bit more. While yes O’Connell is a rookie the team could have still opened things up a bit. Josh Jacobs went from being a featured part of the offense to 39 yards rushing and 1 catch for 12 yards. That ended up harming the team to the point that it made it hard for the Raiders to move the ball.

Raiders Offensive Line

The Raiders offensive line had another rough performance on Sunday. They couldn’t open up any holes in the running game for Josh Jacobs to run through and it resulted in only 39 yards rushing.

The pass blocking was also extremely rough. While yes, “AOC” did struggle when he had time to pass, most of the time he had absolutely no time to throw.

It is true that left tackle Kolton Miller was missing for the second straight game. But the team needs to improve on this offensive line in the future. If you have bad lines, you aren’t going to have a lot of success in football.

If the Raiders are going to win next week, they will need all hands on deck. They return home to Las Vegas to play their arch-rival, the first-place Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs and their new fanbase of Taylor Swift fans will be playing their first game in Las Vegas since the infamous game in January where they literally danced on the Raiders field while huddled up before scoring a touchdown that was called back due to a penalty.