Friday November 1, 2024 | 2 a.m.
The mood in the Raiders locker room after last Sunday’s game at Allegiant Stadium was surprisingly upbeat considering they were coming off a loss to their arch-rivals.
Wide receiver Jakobi Meyers discussed how playing against the Kansas City Chiefs in a 27-20 loss could serve as a “foundation” for the team moving forward. Several teammates agreed and said the performance that dropped Las Vegas to 2-6 this year was something to build on.
Maxx Crosby, Edge’s edge rusher, wasn’t hearing any of this.
“There’s nothing good to lose,” he said. “I don’t care who we play. I expect to win every time we go there and be at my best. You just have to find ways to win.
Crosby, one of the five longest-tenured players on the Raiders’ roster, had his only sustained taste of winning at the NFL level during the 2021 season when the team went 10-7 and reached the playoffs.
The Raiders lost on the road in the wild-card round 26-19 to the Cincinnati Bengals and have been chasing another playoff spot ever since.
They return to the site of their biggest game since moving to Las Vegas on Sunday at 10 a.m. when they face the Bengals again at Paycor Stadium. The final meeting between the teams capped the final game before the venue was renamed Paul Brown Stadium.
In hindsight, this seems like a fitting finale due to its importance in both sides’ recent history. The victory ended a 31-year playoff drought for the Bengals and sparked an improbable run to the Super Bowl, which ended in a 23-20 loss to the Rams a month later at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. Angeles.
They’ve been seen as a perennial AFC contender ever since, but that almost never happened. Most people in the NFL probably don’t remember this detail, but Raiders fans certainly do.
The “what ifs” that arose following the playoff loss to the Bengals have persisted ever since.
Las Vegas arguably outplayed Cincinnati, or at the very least held its own, in a game where it posted advantages in first downs (23 to 18), total yards (5.4 to 5) and yards per game (5.4 to 5).
The final touchdown for the Bengals, who led 20-6 late in the second quarter, was scored by an inadvertent whistle that should have stopped the game.
But the Raiders had a golden chance to tie or win the game when they scored a first-and-goal from the 9-yard line with 30 seconds left. The chance fell through when then-quarterback Derek Carr threw a throw through traffic intended for Zay Jones that Bengals linebacker Germaine Pratt intercepted to end the game.
The result undoubtedly changed the trajectory of the Raiders franchise. Carr, Crosby and many others campaigned for then-interim coach Rich Bisaccia to get the job full-time after the season, but it fell on deaf ears.
Team owner Mark Davis made the decision to move on, in part due to the sloppy performance against the Bengals that saw the Raiders finish -2 in turnover margin before mishandling the game-ending sequence with a first-and-goal spike.
If the Raiders had upset the Bengals, it’s almost certain Bisaccia would be back for another year. Hell, they might have made it to the AFC Championship Game.
The Bengals’ (or Raiders’) next opponent, the Tennessee Titans, was a vulnerable No. 1 seed and showed it in a 19-16 divisional round loss to Cincinnati where the quarterback of then-Ryan Tannehill threw three interceptions.
The Bengals picked up probably their biggest win ever next week, beating the Chiefs 34-31 on the road to win the AFC. The Raiders had lost to the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium 48-9 in Week 14 of the regular season, so it’s more realistic to suggest they could have matched the Bengals in that regard.
But everyone in silver and black would have loved to try.
Both teams’ playoff fates three seasons ago are a testament to how thin the margins are in the NFL — and how they can change everything.
The Raiders most likely would have avoided the tumultuous year-and-a-half tenure of coach Josh McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler if they had beaten the Bengals.
The blockbuster trade for Davante Adams, which served as the first big bolt from the blue for McDaniels and Ziegler, probably still would have happened. Adams and Carr had long dreamed of reuniting, and the former specifically asked the Packers to send him to the Raiders.
Las Vegas surely would have avoided some pitfalls, including signing the aging Chandler Jones to a big contract, which he underperformed for one season before being cut amid a social media meltdown.
Perhaps the Raiders would therefore have finished the 2022-2023 season better and would have been lower in the draft to land on a player who had more impact than Tyree Wilson, who they ultimately selected at 7th overall.
This seems likely because of how Carr functioned better in the Greg Olson-coordinated offense employed by Bisaccia. The Raiders’ all-time leading passer didn’t fit McDaniels’ plan.
Carr probably would have avoided being benched and excommunicated from the team under Bisaccia like he did with McDaniels, but expecting much better results in an alternate reality 2022-23 season seems misguided.
Either way, Las Vegas flirted with the idea of moving on from Carr after the playoff season; the relationship may have ended a little more amicably without McDaniels and Ziegler’s involvement, but it never headed toward a happy ending.
Davis has taken a lot of criticism for his decisions since the playoff season, but he was right to conclude that it was a mirage.
Las Vegas has won four straight games after blowing out a blowout loss to Kansas City by three points or less just to get into the showdown in Cincinnati. The offense lacked high-end talent and the defense overperformed with advanced stats that still illustrated it as one of the worst in the league.
McDaniels and Zielger weren’t the right choices to take the Raiders to the next level, but there’s still hope for their predecessors Antonio Pierce and Tom Telesco, respectively.
Things aren’t looking good right now with four straight losses, but Pierce inspired the team as much as Bisaccia did last season, where he helped lead a dominant defense. He didn’t reach the playoffs, but also had a smaller lead than Bisaccia when he took over after Jon Gruden resigned.
Las Vegas was 3-5 when Pierce replaced McDaniels last year, in contrast to Bisaccia’s 3-2 mark in 2021.
Telesco has a history of building playoff-worthy teams, as six of his 11 teams at his previous stop, the Los Angeles Chargers, posted winning records. He appears to have found his first-round pick, Brock Bowers – a success critical to the long-term prospects of a team that has eluded the Raiders for more than 20 years.
The Bengals are now colloquially regarded as one of the most efficient, big-game-ready teams in the NFL, but that reputation wouldn’t be in place if the Raiders had staged their comeback last time out in Cincinnati.
The Bengals have racked up some long winning streaks since then and pulled off at least one other big playoff upset, against the Bills in the 2022-23 playoffs, but have failed to reach the same heights. They show yearly optimism, however, with the stability in place of a longtime coach (Zac Taylor) and quarterback (Joe Burrow).
Reports indicate that Taylor’s job is not in jeopardy despite a current 3-5 record while there is already much more speculation if the Raiders could move on from Pierce in a year if he continues at his current pace. To break the Raiders’ rapid-fire trend — no Raiders coach has lasted as long as Taylor’s six seasons with the Bengals since Art Shell in 1989-94 — Pierce will need to find a long-term quarterback this offseason.
But he may need victories to get there, and he feels the urgency of this.
“We need everyone we can right now to win games,” he said when asked how he would handle injured players ahead of a bye week. “So there is no rest. Keep losing and you’ll rest much longer.
It’s a reality the Raiders learned all too well in the two losing seasons following their last playoff appearance. It’s natural and fun to speculate on how things might have gone with a few different breaks the last time Las Vegas visited Cincinnati.
But there would have been no radical change. The Raiders weren’t that close to competing at the highest level of the sport at the time, and they only got further away in the last two and a half years.
Now it’s up to Pierce to find out, and finishing the job in Cincinnati this time might be the first step.
Case Keefer can be contacted at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.Case Keefer can be contacted at 702-948-2790 or
