Raiders Week 8 Slay and Bomb

Unlike Week 7’s article, the Week 8 slay and bomb will actually feature a couple of slay performances.

It also includes a sort of post-mortem. The Josh McDaniels/Dave Ziegler era is over. On Halloween night, Mark Davis channeled the ghost of his father and fired the duo, purging the Raiders of the Patriot Way at last. That will be discussed in detail a different time for certain, but here’s for the week 8 slay and bomb article.

The Raiders came into Detroit and kept it a 1 score game for the majority of the time against the Lions. But the offense never got going aside from 1 drive before halftime and the Raiders fell to 3-5 with a 26-14 defeat on Monday Night Football.

One of the Raiders touchdowns came off a pick 6 from cornerback Marcus Peters, who finally got his first interception after numerous dropped picks this season. But that means that an offense that features Davante Adams and Josh Jacobs somehow was held to 7 total points themselves.

Head coach Josh McDaniels emerged after the game to say that he didn’t want to get into who is going to be the starting quarterback moving forward. When I break down Jimmy Garoppolo’s performance in the bomb section of this article, you will know why so many Raider fans are begging for the Raiders to bench him for rookie quarterback Aidan O’Connell. They may now get that wish.

At one point in the second half, it was 16-14 Detroit. The Raiders’ defense spent the majority of the game on the field, with the Lions running an insane 81 plays on offense compared to the Raiders’ 45 plays. The Lions also held the football for almost 40 minutes while the Raiders had the ball for merely 20 minutes of possession. You aren’t going to win many games when you’re that ineffective offensively.

The Raiders offense is amongst the worst in the league despite having the 2022 NFL’s leading rusher and the best wide receiver in the league in Davante Adams. They are somehow worse than they were last season despite head coach Josh McDaniels getting more of his guys including Jakobi Meyers and Jimmy Garoppolo.

At 3-5, it’s hard to not look at this team and the upcoming games and think the season is over. But we can at least look at the Week 8 slay and bomb performances and appreciate the ones who have come to play every week.

Slay

Maxx Crosby & the Raiders Defense

Playing in front of his hometown crowd, Maxx Crosby came in and played his butt off like he has every week of the season. He’s been a candidate for a slay performance every week except for week 7. If he was on a better team, he would likely be getting serious consideration for Defensive Player of the Year.

Crosby had 8 tackles, a forced fumble, and a fumble recovery. The forced fumble and recovery happened inside the red zone as well and prevented a Lions scoring drive. With how bad the offense was, Crosby led a defensive unit that kept the Raiders in the game until near the end of the 3rd quarter when a Lions touchdown that put Detroit up by 9 made it apparent that the game was over.

With how the Raiders defense had to battle through 81 plays, they all deserve some praise. Crosby led the charge, but Luke Masterson also forced a fumble before leaving with a concussion. Robert Spillane recovered the fumble on the play. Nate Hobbs returned from injury and recorded the team’s only sack of the game. Marcus Peters took an interception to the house, only the 17th Raiders defensive pick 6 since 2003.

The Raiders defense put up a valiant effort, but it was in vain on Monday. However, they’ll get their flowers here in this article for what it’s worth. Patrick Graham’s unit has performed much better this season than was expected and it will be interesting to see what happens both the remainder of this season as well as after the season.

With that being said, the only negative for the game was that Lions rookie running back Jahmyr Gibbs had 189 total yards from scrimmage. But when you’re on the field for over 80 plays, somebody is bound to have a huge performance on your defense.

Bomb

Jimmy Garoppolo

Davante Adams: 1 catch for 11 yards. Jakobi Meyers: 1 catch for 19 yards. Michael Mayer: 1 catch for 19 yards. Jimmy Garoppolo: 10/21 126 yards 0 touchdowns 1 interception. Jimmy G didn’t even reach 100 yards passing until the 4th quarter. The Lions have the 23rd-ranked defense in terms of yards allowed. Jimmy Garoppolo made them look like the 2000 Ravens.

Anytime the Lions sent any sort of blitz, you knew the pass wasn’t coming out because Jimmy was curled up in the fetal position and falling to the ground before any sort of blitz even came in. Not since the days of Jeff George or Jim Everett against the 49ers in the 1989 NFC Championship has a quarterback been seen to falter so quickly in the face of any sort of pressure.

Jimmy’s inability to either get away from a blitz or get the football out quickly led to 6 Lions sacks on Monday. It was a frustrating performance to witness. But even worse were the misses.

On 2 different occasions at least, Jimmy G could have hit a wide-open Davante Adams for a 97-yard touchdown and 60-yard touchdown. The first pass sailed to a Gatorade cooler on the sidelines, and the other missed a wide-open Adams by about 3-4 yards. For most the night, Adams was left wide open or in single coverage 1 on 1 with a cornerback without safety help. It’s inexcusable not getting the ball to Adams, especially in those situations.

Jakobi Meyers didn’t get a target until the second half. The Raiders passing attack hasn’t looked this ineffective since the Bed & Breakfast offense in the days of Andrew Walter/Aaron Brooks from 2006. It’s bad enough that Garoppolo’s stats in his first 6 starts are actually comparable to Jamarcus Russell’s.

Russell had 5 touchdowns and 3 interceptions with a QB rating of 76.6. Garoppolo by comparison has 7 touchdowns and 9 interceptions with a QB rating of 78.1 Garoppolo also leads the entire NFL in interceptions despite missing 2 1/2 games already this season. He only threw 4 last season with the 49ers in 10 starts.

Something needs to change at the quarterback position for the Raiders. If Jimmy Garoppolo gives you the best chance to win out of all of the quarterbacks on your roster, then you’ve done a massive job failing to build your roster. It also stresses the question, why move on from former quarterback Derek Carr who spent 9 years with the Raiders and was also the only reason why Davante Adams joined the Raiders in the first place?

Sure, Carr was far from perfect. He was the first piece of stability the team had at the most important position since Rich Gannon and didn’t miss games due to injuries. He also was a deep passing threat which allowed Jacobs to lead the league in rushing due to defenses backing off to respect the threat of the bomb, something that has been desperately missing this season from the Raiders offense.

Raiders fans deserve better. Davante Adams deserves better. The Raiders need better play from the quarterback position and Jimmy Garoppolo isn’t capable of it. He’s thrown at least 1 interception in every game that he has started this season, as has every quarterback the Raiders have started. Monday marked the 15th consecutive game the Raiders offense has had a turnover.

Raiders Offensive Line

Greg Van Roten aside who garnered a 93.3 grade from Pro Football Focus, the Raiders’ offensive line absolutely crumbled on Monday. True, Garoppolo played terribly on Monday. The offensive line did absolutely no favors to anybody. Neither the offensive line nor Garoppolo did even a halfway decent job of picking up blitzes.

Josh Jacobs once again just like every week this season had to struggle with dealing with 3-4 rushers coming through to greet him behind the line of scrimmage. A lot of that is because teams are stacking the boxes because they know Garoppolo can’t throw the ball deep and don’t respect anybody who is running a deep pass. That leads to them stacking the line of scrimmage to stop the run-in order to force Garoppolo to pass and it’s been working.

The offensive line needed to be improved in the offseason and they weren’t. GM Dave Ziegler and Josh McDaniels decided to run it back with the same offensive line and while they were halfway decent last season, they’ve very obviously regressed. That’s one of the many reasons why they got fired.

The offensive line has struggled with picking up assignments on blitzes and whenever teams’ blitz there’s almost always at least 1 free blitzer that comes through. Monday was no different and the Lions happily collected 6 of the easiest sacks I’ve seen. It felt like I was watching the mid 2000s Raiders offensive line with how brutal the pass blocking was. You aren’t going to win games if you get dominated like this at the line of scrimmage.

Offensive Play calling

Aside from 1 drive, the offense just never got going. Play calling never hit its stride. They heavily ran the ball on the Lions for one drive, it worked and resulted in a touchdown, and then that was it. They established an identity for one moment and just completely erased it and lost it for the remainder of the game. They resorted to trying to air it out on the Lions defense even when only down by 2 and it never worked at all.

The Raiders offense seemed to call plays as if they thought they had Derek Carr at quarterback instead of Jimmy Garoppolo. Nothing worked, nothing fit, and nothing was executed correctly. The Lions’ offense at one point had 6 straight drives go inside the Raiders’ 30-yard line which the Raiders defense bravely held off. The Raiders offense had 157 total yards for the entire game.

What are the Raiders trying to do here? Are they a spread offense that attacks you through the air or are they a grind-it-out old-school football offense? If they’re the first option, they have the wrong quarterback for the job. If they’re the second option, they’ve done an absolutely abysmal job of working on that and establishing that identity in games.

The Raiders have done this in almost every game, and it’s resulted in an offense that is near the bottom of the league in every statistic despite spending $104 million total on their offense. That is also despite having a former offensive coordinator as a head coach. This team is ridiculously talented but is held back by the play of their quarterback and the coaching job being done by Josh McDaniels.

Troy Aikman said it best on Monday. This is a team that won 10 games with interim head coach Rich Bisaccia, thought they were too good for him and needed to bring in the Patriot Way, and now they’re at the bottom of the league.

Next week, the Raiders get to return home to Las Vegas and play the New York Giants. The Giants have former Raiders tight end Darren Waller who is questionable with the same hamstring injury that forced him to miss most of the last 2 seasons with the Raiders. If he’s healthy, he’s going to be looking for revenge. It’ll be a battle of 2 of the 3 worst offenses in the league.

The bright side of this is it’ll be without head coach Josh McDaniels. McDaniels and GM Dave Ziegler were fired on Halloween night. Interim head coach Antonio Pierce will be leading the team out of the tunnel on Sunday.