Raiders Choke Away week 2 victory. Is it too early to panic?
Photo by Kirby Lee
The Las Vegas Raiders came out firing to start Sunday afternoon's game against the Arizona Cardinals by scoring a touchdown on their opening drive with an 11 yard pass from Derek Carr to Davante Adams.
The Raiders followed this up with an impressive second quarter on both sides of the football, taking a commanding 20-0 lead into the half after accumulating 258 total offensive yards and 15 first downs. With a solid third quarter despite allowing an Arizona touchdown, the Raiders answered with a field goal to keep the score at a dominant 23-7. Raider Nation was feeling confident it was going to get its first victory of the season, a meaningful blow out of the Cardinals just like the Kansas City Chiefs had done to them the prior week.
This could position the Raiders as a real contender early on, but the Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray had a different plan by putting up 16 fourth quarter points. The entire stadium could feel the shift of momentum. Raiders fans had little hope when the game reached overtime and were laid to rest when the Cardinals defense returned a Hunter Renfrow fumble for a touchdown to seal the comeback.
It may be time for the Raiders to start panicking a bit. There were obvious highlights and low points from a game like that. The biggest positive in my opinion had to be the offensive line, allowing only one sack the entire game. However it was not an excellent performance as the Raiders couldn’t get a running game going on the ground in the second half, leading to the downfall.
A major difficulty still exists in the secondary, who got torched in the second half by Arizona’s sub par wide receivers, imagine if Deandre Hopkins was playing? As a team the Raiders need to get Davante Adams more engaged, only two catches the entire game that both came on the first drive is unacceptable.
Head coach Josh McDaniels and his staff need to quickly figure out how to perpetuate the good from the first half and avoid the mistakes of the second half, because the road to the playoffs doesn’t get any easier in the NFL.