Raiders Prove They Can Compete With The Best After 33-30 Loss To Bills

Raiders fall to the Bills 31-30 in what was, I thought, a pretty impressive competitive game by both teams. If there were questions to be had about what is real for the Raiders, are we more like the team that played the Chiefs or are we more like the team that played the Buffalo or the team that played the New England Patriots? I think there is precedent to be set now that we were closer to that Chiefs game than we are the Patriots game there were some bumps in the road and specifically three moments that I think really cost us the game I'm sure you guys can predict them but overall obviously no moral victories I thought we had a legit chance to win this game we controlled a lot of that fourth quarter the third quarter absolutely killed us I thought Kubiak made some good good decisions and some bad mistakes I was ready to completely bail on Kirk Cousins and then he comes back and goes right down the field before we get the ball back to go three and out. Ash Njenti was MIA in the second half. Crosby had his best, I think, overall game in terms of the run, the pass containing Josh Allen this entire season. And I think there's an overall narrative that's being built around this team that I think is true and that I'm going to get into here. I'm frustrated, obviously. I am frustrated, but I think we put to bed for the time being that we are completely fraudulent in terms of what happened last week, and we're going to get into it right now. I think it's safe to say that my confidence is officially shaken in the Las Vegas Raiders after two straight losses. The Chiefs' loss was a pretty good loss as far as losses go. The Patriots' loss, not so much. The Patriots turned their season around playing the Buffalo Bills, so maybe we can do the same here as we check the markets on Kalshi. There's also spreads here as well. Buffalo Bills win by over 5.5 points, over 52.5%. Buffalo Bills outright chance to win right now sits at 69% which is what the market has been set at and if I'm trading with my head I would probably lean toward taking that but if we purchase the yes contract for the Raiders to win and we put a crisp 25 on it the payout is 7690 which is interesting now look if you're interested in checking out Kalshi you can use code all the board instantly get 25 when you trade 25 and the unique thing about Kalshi that separates it from traditional sports books is that with Kalshi you're not betting against the house it is peer to peer trading purchasing yes or no contracts based on the markets that the users set and you can trade on anything from politics to movies to sports you name it Kalshi has it go check them out Okay, I'm going to go right into the box score here, and then I'm going to read off my notes, because I have a ton of notes from this game. But I think what's interesting, especially about the defense, is, yeah, James Cook kind of did his thing, but he's one of the best running backs in the league. We held him under 100 yards. Josh Allen had a couple Superman-mode plays, but overall he didn't absolutely blow me away in this game. He was good and he was efficient, but his average yards per play was really down in this game, and I think that was a testament to the defense. We're going to get to the macro stuff with Kirk Cousins and Trey Tucker and all that. But if you look at the overall picture of this game, we totaled more yards. We totaled more pass yards. We still can't get the run game going. We averaged more yards per play. We had more first downs. We were better on third down. We didn't allow sack. We punted only one more time. We had fewer penalties for fewer penalty yards. But that interception that was thrown, that almost dang near took the wind out of our sails. Kirk Cousins came back from that. And in that moment, I mean, I'll get into it. In that moment, I was ready to bail on Kirk Cousins. But red zone conversions, we just can't score touchdowns in the red zone. It's becoming an issue and a big issue. But man, that third quarter, that third quarter was absolutely horrific. By midway through the fourth quarter, we started to outgain the Buffalo Bills in the second half, which was crazy this was another game like the Chiefs game where it's crazy to say like it felt like we were the better team because the Bills defense got the play made they forced the turnover but for large stretches in the first quarter end of the second quarter and midway through the fourth we kind of controlled that game and I got a lot of notes here that I'm going to reference to I thought Gentee was awesome in pass protection he clearly was on some sort of pitch count and I think they got him going and kubiak got him in a real rhythm in the uh in the past game we're going to focus on him more in a little bit rogers over jpj that was interesting rogers didn't have a great game but i thought initially he was playing pretty well um trade and stooks is continuing to impress he had a penalty it's going to happen him and zeke mass has made good plays and they made bad plays but you just need to see them bouncing back from it and i and i did appreciate that i feel like my camera is like slanted hold on is it it was anyway um robbie leonard in the first the first bit of the game was bad and then bounced back i thought that was awesome i am so so done with the tush push with having a fullback taking a snap if i never see it again it'll be too early for it to be gone get rid of it i'm over it and uh michael mayer A lot of us challenged him to live up to that contract People were wondering why he did get that contract And he's been awesome this whole year When Brock Bowers was getting doubled And tripled early in this game Michael Mayer stepped up And was that pass catching threat we needed Along with Trey Tucker Trey Tucker was awesome in this game too That's what we want to see from Trey Tucker He's back on track to having a thousand yard season Like we predicted here And then lastly My main takeaway from this game Before I get into the micro stuff here is and comment comment below your main takeaways and if you agree with this take is right now this team has learned how to compete but they haven't learned how to finish they haven't yet beaten a team that looking back they were better than obviously now we know we're way better than the Chargers, but at the time the Chargers were favored ahead of them, we need to learn how to finish games particularly on the offensive end because if we go into my three key moments here there were three moments that I was like, you cannot make these mistakes and expect to be in this game. So the fact that we did make these mistakes and then we were in this game is a testament to Kubiak and to Spytek and to the roster and to the team that they're building. It's frustrating, but you know, it is what it is. The first thing, I'm going to go right to that last three and out drive. There's five minutes or so left on the clock. You have two timeouts and a two minute warning. We go pass, pass, pass, punt. I understand it's probably not a good move there to go for it on fourth and 10 from your own 20, I get it, I don't think I would go for it either but in that moment, and I said in our Discord and you got to be in the Discord, you have to be in there, link in the description below I think you don't abandon the run there, yards are at a premium, you need to make sure that you put yourself in a position to think about going for it and going pass pass pass I think was the wrong move and I think it was a mistake by Clint Kubiak because you were having success running the ball with Mike Washington. I would have liked a rhythm completion. They were trying to stretch the ball down the field. I would have liked a screen pass, a run inside, something to get a couple yards to be able to open up the playbook The second thing was, it was second and one. When we kicked that field goal to get to 16 points, we were down 23-13 It was second and one. Genty gets blown up, like absolutely blown up by Caleb Rogers good teams in the red zone can run the ball and score, we did it early in the game, we failed to do it and that was a bad moment in the game where you have to get in the end zone and then lastly the pick in that moment when he threw that pick because he was afraid to take a sack and he throws the pick, in my, in that moment I'm thinking we just lost the game, we're not going to force a turnover or stop and is it time to go to Mendoza not because Kirk Cousins has has shat the bed so badly but because does Mendoza give us that extra edge that best chance to win now with that being said and the interception was bad it might be the reason we lost I mean it's it's one play you got to look at every single play but Kirk Cousins came back he went right down the field and then we got the ball back and went three and out but Kirk Cousins has has has been stable and I don't think it's ready to pull the plug yet but that was a huge moment in the game and you can't make that throw. And that decision, so backed up. I can't remember if they ended up scoring a touchdown or a field goal off of it. But speaking of the defense, I know they let up 33 points. Seven of those points was off of that interception that they were able to just go down and score. Josh Allen made a superheroic play. The Bills are scoring 30 on everybody. I thought the defense played well enough to win this game. I thought the offense let the defense down. I was impressed by Max today. I was impressed by the cornerback group. I was impressed by Jeremy Trin and Trey Stukes. The linebackers were flying around. Again, James Cook under 100 yards. Josh Allen, lowest yards per play of the entire year. I don't have a real negative thing to say about the defense. They don't have the best personnel. They have a lot of young guys and a lot of good vets. And Robbie Leonard, his first time defensive coordinator, and in the beginning he was getting worked. But they came out in the second half, particularly in the fourth quarter, and they gave us a chance to win. Those three moments I talked about, the pick, Rodgers getting blown up on second down and Kubiak going pass, pass, pass is really what killed it for us. I think that's what killed it for us. But other than that, I really thought the defense was competitive enough to win this game. So now I'm just making sure here if Clint is at the podium because we'll go right to the presser. I don't believe he's at the podium just yet. Nope, he is not at the podium just yet. So we'll hit our other topics. I do want to remind you to just hit that subscribe button. We are pushing towards 17,000. It does help the channel out tremendously. Genti, interesting game. He scored his first rushing touchdown, and he was getting into a groove early. And he is getting blown up behind the line in a lot of these plays. But Mike Washington, for whatever reason, isn't. Let me pull up the stats again here, because their yards per carry discrepancy, again, was kind of alarming. It's a little circumstantial, but it's Mike Washington who averaged 4.8 per carry, and Gentry averaged 2.2. Now, Gentry, again, pretty good pass-catching game. Four receptions for 36 yards, along at 15. he might have been gone on the screen pass if he didn't get clipped and he had the touchdown but the run game again they just can't get it going and i think he was on a pitch count in the second half he did not play that much they gave the ball to mike washington a lot and mike washington showed up so you know if you add up the stuff here we had you know 19 carries for 65 yards and the touchdown let me do some quick math on that divided by 19 is 3.4 per carry it's not great, but it's better than what we have been doing. But we still can't seem to get Ashton Gentry going in the run game. He was on some weird pitch count. And like I said about Kirk Cousins before, I thought he was okay in this game. I just wonder if because he's so immobile, especially in the red zone, he can't extend the play. I keep pitching this. Hopefully somebody from the Raiders sees this and gets this back to them. A red zone package for Mendoza could be the thing that you can use to get Mendoza some exposure and to get us more red zone conversions into touchdowns instead of field goals because Kirk Cousins is a gamer like even toward the end of the game where maybe he was seemingly out of hand boom Trey Tucker over the top we're still in it onside kick away I don't know what the hell Matt Gay was doing there he's been great all year but go back to the well in terms of what we're doing with that that onside kick but I was ready to bail on him he came back he shut me up he proved me wrong and uh you know we got the Rams next week who are two and four sitting at three and three with the Patriots game being at this point a massive outlier we were right there we were right there to be four and two or five and one like the NFL is a game of inches and week to week you have to be able to bounce back and I think that's my biggest takeaway with all of this is old Raider teams play a game like they played last week and that ends their entire season and nobody thought we were going to be as competitive as we were in this game to the point where again we could have won this game we could have legitimately won this game and those three moments like i said especially with going three and out you're just not going to get the ball back again i know i know you can't go for it there but i don't know man um we're still waiting for Clint Kubiak here i'm looking at my notes here to see if anything else i didn't talk about um oh i guess i'll talk about this because it was just hilarious Jim Nance having to ice his hand at halftime because JJ Watt was doing the peanut Tillman punch out thing and he was like jim punch the ball really punch it first of all jj watt goes punch it hard i want you to punch it as hard as you can jim nance punches it as hard as he can he like has like a blank stare on his face like i think i just broke my hand and then jj watt goes oh well jim i didn't think you were gonna actually hit it that hard you told him to hit it JJ and Jim Nance was like I think I just broke my wrist and it was like ha ha ha very funny and then we come back from halftime and he's got some sort of like thing on his hand absolutely hilarious um what else I'm done with the tush push like I said before it's just a ridiculous play yeah I think that's it I mean we're just waiting for the press conference here they're just talking to Lincoln Kennedy right now or not Lincoln Kennedy is Lincoln Kennedy no somebody else I don't know who this is but look Trey Tucker was really good in this game to what I've said about the red zone if they're not going to do a Mendoza thing is that they have to figure out a way to run the ball because with Brock Bowers getting doubled and tripled and the guy that was guarding him I forget his name he was really good all day Brock still had four for 70 he still did his thing he didn't get his touchdown but he still did his thing you need somebody to step up in the red zone and that was an awesome throw from Kirk Cousins and Trey Tucker I mean 95 and two touchdowns like what are Trey Tucker stats on the season Trey Tucker stats so I don't think this is updated yet i just want to compare what he's done right now to what he's done last year uh okay so 2023 get 333 yards two touchdowns this isn't updated yet so so far let's add 95 here 274 plus 95 equals right now he's 369 yards and three touchdowns so if we divide that by six games he's averaging 61.5 times 17 he's he's on pace for a 10,000 or 10,000 1,045 yards and you know eight or eight-ish touchdowns it's a pretty good year from Trey Tucker and and it's showing what he can do when we stretch the ball down the field Kirk Cousins let it fly blow bro he's trying to like dink and dunk and be precision and blah blah blah blah blah and it's it's it works for the time being but if you get pressure if you got one on one take the shot man you got to take the shot let me pop in here to the Raiders post game here to see what they're talking about and the and field position giving up i think was an issue because we're just waiting for the presser at this point to a field goal and the raiders lost by field goal so you're assessing yeah but that's a yeah but special teams to me that wasn't really the you know that was one bad play we'll watch it tomorrow i'm not going to sit here and wait for it and let you guys watch a video that you don't to watch look it was a competitive game let me know your thoughts below this is a safe space shout out to my five and ten dollar patrons and youtube members make sure we are hitting that like button commenting away and please reach for the subscribers free after no charge to you i love you guys three and three and i'll see you next time