Raiders Week 4 Slay and Bomb

The “AOC” era of Raider football saw some serious slay and bomb performances on Sunday. Raiders rookie quarterback Aidan O’Connell started in place of starting quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo on Sunday and turned in a rather interesting performance. But the results remained the same. The Raiders fell to their division rivals, the Los Angeles Chargers, 24-17 in Los Angeles despite a majority Raiders crowd in attendance.

Raiders Week 4 Slay and Bomb

The Raiders, for the 4th consecutive week, were unable to score more than 17 points this season. They’ve scored exactly 17 points in 3 out of 4 games this season. Raider Nation has to be frustrated with the lack of progress by the team despite having high-end talent like Devante Adams and Josh Jacobs on the roster.

Aidan O’Connell didn’t prove to be much of an upgrade over Garoppolo. But some other Raiders have major slay performances, while others had some massive bomb performances in Los Angeles.

Slay

Maxx Crosby

Maxx Crosby once again dominated with a slay performance on Sunday. Crosby played like a man possessed, and the Chargers offensive line was hardly able to contain him or the Raiders pass rush in general. The Raiders pass rush actually found their way home to Chargers star quarterback Justin Herbert. Herbert was constantly chased all over the field all game long, not being allowed to sit contently in the pocket and carve up the Raiders’ defense for the first time in any of his games against the team.

Crosby is no stranger to slay performances. He’s one of the premier edge rushers in all of football and is one of the most high-effort guys that you can sit down and watch every week. If you have a kid growing up who wants to play football, this is a guy I’d recommend showing them because he never takes plays off. His performance on Sunday showcased this all game long.

Crosby, for the game, finished with five tackles for loss, two sacks, and one sack that resulted in a fumble but was called back due to cornerback David Long Jr. being offsides and wreaking havoc on the Chargers pocket all game long. The Chargers attempted the bold strategy of mostly blocking Crosby 1-on-1 due to the Raiders blitzing more often. This didn’t really work too well. But it also speaks to the more aggressive strategy the Raiders came out with.

Herbert ended up finishing with a paltry stat line, especially compared to his previous outings against the Raiders. Crosby helped contribute heavily to his rough day.

Josh Jacobs

I’ve been waiting for several weeks to add this man’s name to the slay performance list, and here he is. Josh Jacobs had his first breakout game of the season and was almost able to get them the win against the Chargers.

Jacobs got better on the ground as the game wore on, as he tends to do. Whereas in previous weeks, he seemed a step too slow, during this game, he was aggressive. He ran through running lanes or created his own, and the Chargers had difficulty stopping him. He also showcased his duel-threat ability in the receiving game, as he ended up being the Raiders leading receiver for both teams.

Jacobs, on the ground, had his first rushing touchdown of the year and finished with 17 carries for 58 yards plus the one rushing touchdown. Through the air, Jacobs had eight catches for 81 yards. This is his first game, having over 100 scrimmage yards this season, and something that needs to happen more going forward. This man had his first slay performance of the season, and Raider Nation is hoping it won’t be his last.

Raiders Secondary

It was an absolutely physical matchup with lots of hand fighting per usual in an AFC West divisional showdown. But the Raiders secondary came through with a slay performance until near the very end. They even turned in their first interception of the season and proved my pregame prediction incorrect.

I had thought Herbert was going to torch the Raiders. I didn’t have much faith in defensive coordinator Patrick Graham’s unit, as Herbert came into Sunday’s game with a career stat-line of 14 touchdowns to one interception against the Silver and Black. But they rose to the occasion.

Bolstered by an unyielding pass rush, Tre’von Moehrig got the Raiders defense’s first interception of the season. The Raiders secondary was very opportunistic and made great plays all afternoon long. Several times, Chargers receivers would be in prime position to make a play on the football, only for a Raiders defensive back to swat the ball out of their hands for an incompletion.

This much-maligned unit managed to hold Justin Herbert to 13-24 passing for 167 yards, with a touchdown and an interception. They didn’t get attacked much through the air. True, a deep bomb by Herbert ended up winning the Chargers the game. But a replay did show that Chargers receiver Joshua Palmer got away with a great pushoff, which should’ve resulted in offensive pass interference. This would’ve resulted in a replay of downs and pushed the Chargers offense back. Instead, it won them the game.

Bomb

Josh McDaniels

Go ahead and take your usual seat on the couch there, Mr. McDaniels. Once again, the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders ends up in the bomb section by attempting to prove that he is the smartest man in the room. Once again, it heavily backfired and led to a Raiders loss.

This time, he managed to make multiple decisions that I felt harshly harmed the team. Firstly, the Raiders had a situation where they were down 24-10. They had a 4th and 35 and could’ve lined up for a 55-yard field goal. True that it only makes the score 24-13, which might not sound like it makes a difference. But that brought the score to a potential scenario where if the Raiders had gotten the ball back and scored, they would have had a chance to reduce the score to a 24-21 deficit by getting the 2-point conversion.

With a rookie quarterback in charge of the team, you want to take as much pressure off him as you can, not put the entire game on his shoulders. Getting the score down to where you only need a game-tying field goal would have helped tremendously at the end of the game. But as I’m about to explore, nothing about the Josh McDaniels experience is meant to be easy for players or fans, it seems.

The Raiders’ defense stood their ground on a 4th and inches and got the ball back for the Raiders’ offense deep in Chargers territory. Aidan O’Connell managed to get the ball down to the Chargers 3-yard line by finding Devante Adams repeatedly on the way to the red zone. This is where Josh McDaniels really cost the Raiders a potential win.

On the previous drive on first down, the Raiders ran some sort of a weird bootleg pass to the right, where Aidan O’Connell took the snap, scrambled to his right, and threw the ball away. It was a bit of a wasted play and didn’t hurt anything, but the design of it was a bit strange since it grouped a bunch of Raiders receivers and Chargers defensive backs in a small area in the corner of the endzone.

On this drive, McDaniels decided to try and run the same play again. Again, the play didn’t appear to work as Raiders receivers had their back turned to the play, and it was evident nobody was open. But this time, O’Connell attempted to force a pass for what would’ve been his first career touchdown pass. Instead, it was an interception by Chargers cornerback Asante Samuel Jr.

I could absolutely tear into the rookie quarterback for this, as McDaniels did postgame. He mentioned O’Connell’s struggles in his first career start without mentioning the real biggest question: why even call that play in the first play? The play didn’t work the drive before. Nobody on the field was fooled, and it was an absolute waste of a play. Why not hand it off to Josh Jacobs, who had been absolutely running through the Chargers’ defense without prejudice in that 4th quarter?

Why would you put the ball in the hands of your rookie quarterback and expect him to go out and win the game when he’s been struggling all day with fumble issues? He lost two earlier in the game and almost lost a three if not for a defensive holding penalty, with Khalil Mack staring down the barrel of a record-tying 6th sack, no less. In this instance, McDaniels ironically made the same decision that the Seahawks made in the Super Bowl against his Patriots and to the exact same result that befell them.

It was a terrible pass, to be certain, but it was an even worse playcall. It ended up costing the Raiders the game. Once again, the Raiders offense couldn’t surpass 17 points on Sunday. Josh McDaniels is an offensive-minded coach who has padded his resume working with Tom Brady in New England, but this season, with a roster he himself got to help pick out, has failed to have a game where his offense managed more than two total touchdowns and a field goal.

Nobody coming into 2023 would have predicted the Raiders defense would be outperforming its offense, especially with an “offensive genius” as a head coach. Something to monitor going forward also; the Raiders spent a second and a third-round pick on tight end Michael Mayer and wide receiver Tre Tucker. Combined through 4 games, the pair have one catch for two yards. Sunday was bad enough, but now there’s fear that the 2023 draft class might end up in an end-of-the-season bomb performance review.

Turnovers and Penalties

Good lord, that was a rough one. Even with all the flags and turnovers, the Raiders still almost won the game. It’s like Groundhog Day for Raiders fans, though. We’ve seen this same show play out too many times over the last 20 years, where the team plays just well enough to win but ends up losing mostly after shooting themselves in the foot. Another bomb performance for all involved in these costly plays.

The Raiders gave up two fumbles and an interception. It was a tough first game for rookie quarterback Aidan O’Connell. He got a “welcome to the NFL rookie” special on Sunday with the three turnovers. Part of the problem was holding onto the ball too long or simply not moving in the pocket at all.

The Raiders were also undisciplined when it came to penalties. In other words, the grass is green, and the sky is blue. It’s a sentence that has been repeated most years since 1960. 9 flags for 80 yards aren’t the worst stats you can imagine for a Raiders game. But the timing of a lot of those penalties is what ended up being back-breaking.

Jakobi Meyers getting flagged for a questionable crackback block after a nice play by the Raiders offense, another that came on the long interception return by Moehrig, both offensive tackles committing false start penalties on short yardage situations, and three first downs from penalties.

The most concerning play of the game happened when Jerry Tillery got ejected. On a scramble by Justin Herbert, the former Chargers defensive lineman Tillery decided he wanted revenge for being released the prior year by the Chargers and took a cheap shot at the quarterback. It was not a smart move, as about 15 Chargers immediately got into his face and fought him 15 on 1 while a couple of Raiders showed up just to try and pull him out of the scrum.

It was a play that reeked of incompetent leadership and is another indictment on Josh McDaniels. When you have a player on the field taking cheap shots and attempting to injure others instead of helping the team win, it means you’ve truly lost the team. This isn’t old-school football where a hit like Tillery’s would’ve just been another play. In the old days of this rivalry, hits like that were common. In 2023, it’s a dumb penalty and an ejectable offense.

Raiders Pass Blocking

After three weeks of doing a good to great job of defending Jimmy Garoppolo, the Raiders pass blocking unit absolutely crumbled to dust with a bomb performance. They’ve gone from slay to bomb. Part of it was likely unfamiliarity with Aidan O’Connell and the fact that the rookie held onto the ball way too long. He was waiting for guys to come wide open, just like in college and like he saw in the preseason against backups and practice squad guys.

The other problem is that they ran into a one-man wrecking crew and a future Hall of Famer with a vendetta. No player since Marcus Allen has come for blood the same way that Khalil Mack has since being traded by the Raiders in 2018. Older fans used to pass down stories about how Marcus Allen went to the Chiefs and tormented the Raiders from 93-97 by going 9-1 with massive performances in that time period.

Fans who were too young for Marcus but old enough to see Khalil Mack are going to be telling younger fans about his torment of the Silver and Black in his return games against the team. Mack was a massive fan favorite from Oakland, but against the Raiders on Sunday, he decided to enact quite a bit of sweet revenge.

Last season, he had a massive game in L.A. against the Raiders to open the season and his Charger career on the right path. On Sunday, he showcased again why he was a former defensive player of the year for the Raiders by producing six sacks and two forced fumbles. The six sacks on Sunday were one away from the NFL record of 7 held by Derrick Thomas from 1990 against Seattle and one more than Mack’s career high of 5 that he set while with the Raiders in 2015 against Denver.

The Raiders offensive line gave up seven sacks total, losing 50 yards of field possession. That’s half the field going backward. If you combine that with the 80 yards of penalties that the team had, that’s over a touchdown’s worth of field possession that the team yielded to sacks and penalties.

It’s rare that any team is going to be able to overcome something like that to win. Yet the Raiders came back from a 24-7 Chargers lead and were almost able to win before they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Next week, the Raiders get to travel back to Las Vegas for a primetime Monday Night Football showdown with the Green Bay Packers. The Packers come limping into this game at 2-2, having lost on Thursday Night Football at home to the surging Detroit Lions. The Raiders currently sit tied for last place with the 1-3 Denver Broncos. If they’re going to turn around their season, it’s got to come against the Packers.