The Oakland Raiders were the seventh ranked offense last year so the expectation was that after adding Marshawn Lynch and giving Derek Carr another year to grow that they would come in this year and improve on that number.
That hasn’t happened. The Raiders are the 18th ranked offense and in the past four weeks they look like the 2009 Chiefs with games of 16, 17, 10 and 10 points scored.
“When you look at the tape, you can see that we’re so close on so many things,” Raiders OC Todd Downing said this week. “I know that sounds cliché and I know that sounds like someone sitting up here and trying to give you the rose-colored glasses, but it’s the truth. We know that we’re just this close to making a couple more plays each game and being able to come out on top and feeling like we put together a good product. You’re right, stats aren’t everything, but they are often an indicator in areas that you might be struggling a little bit. We know that there are some areas that we’ve identified that we want to get better at quickly.”
In those four games where the Raiders scored under 20 points, the Raiders OC said that they didn’t run enough plays on offense. In the first two games of the season when they scored 26 and 45 points, they did run enough offensive plays. The Raiders offense isn’t on the field enough because they’re not extending drives. They’re 27th in first downs (the Chiefs are tied for fourth). They’re 21st in third down percentage (the Chiefs are sixth).
“They’re an extremely well-coached team,” Downing said of the Chiefs. “They don’t beat themselves, which is something we need to stop doing offensively is beat ourselves.”