Loud N' Proud by Blitzchick
Missed It By That Much...
The Raiders dropped again, falling to 2-7 when they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs 16-10 in Oakland.
The game started off fairly well for the Raiders.
To say I was trepidatious when the Raiders yet again decided to receive the ball after winning the coin toss would be a bit of an understatement. The last time this happened at a home game? While driving, JaMarcus Russell threw an interception. This gave San Diego the ball in good field possession. The game before? JaMarcus Russell fumbled the ball away to the Jets on our 4 yard line.
I think I had reason to feel uneasy.
I was pleasantly surprised with less than 3 minutes gone in the game the Raiders had already put up a touchdown. This was aided in great part by a 60 yard run by Michael Bush, with blocking provided most of the way by Darrius Heyward-Bey. Though Bush came up short of the goal line, Justin Fargas scored on dive two plays later.
When the Kansas City Chiefs opened their drive with a false start? I smiled. When they were 3rd and 12 and Chris Johnson stole the ball away from Chris Chambers on a Matt Cassel pass? I was almost ecstatic.
On seeing McFadden in under center running a wild cat offense? I was floored. We did end up punting after Johnnie Lee Higgins was unable to go forward after catching a pass from JaMarcus Russell, though.
Sadly, this type of implosion isn’t an aberration for the Raiders. But I still had reason to hope. We were on the Kansas City 46 when we did punt. We had moved the ball. It wasn’t a three and out. It wasn’t a long possession by any stretch of the imagination, but we at least has a first down in the series.
I was wanting to be hopeful. I was afraid to be hopeful. I was hopeful.
Especially when the ball was fair caught inside the 10 yard line. Kansas City , after all, has been struggling as bad as we have offensively.
End result of this series of downs? Richard Seymour batted the ball out of Cassel’s hand as he was bringing the ball forward.
KC Punter Colquitt didn’t have a lot of room, but still he managed a 46 yard punt. Johnnie Lee Higgins didn’t get much of a return. Add a penalty for a block below the waist and we were at our own 37 yard line. We netted -6 yards. Justin Fargas dropped a ball he should have had thrown to him by JaMarcus Russell. So then he spiked it. That was -5 yards on a delay of game call. Right call, childish action by the usually steady Fargas.
I started to get the “uh oh, here we go again” feeling about this time as this was a three-and-out series.
Then I remembered who we had punting for us - Shane Lechler. And this time he wasn’t working on a shortened field. He unleashed a 56 yard punt. Savage was able to return it 19 yards after a missed tackle.
Chris Johnson was beat on a pass play for 30 yards. From their own 32 to our 38 yard line in seconds. After that they were able to get another 6 yards. The 50 yard field goal attempt by Ryan Succop was good. Our lead was down to 4 points.
That uneasy feeling I had got worse.
Jonathan Holland had only a 13 yard return, but at least we were outside the 20 yard line.
This would have been another 3 and out series, as there were 2 incomplete passes after a short gain on a run. I am putting both of these incomplete passes on JaMarcus Russell. He tried one pass to TE Zach Miller. It was way behind him. Miller was open, but showing poor technique, JaMarcus Russell threw off his back foot. There was a deeper pass that was intended for Murphy, but it was not thrown over Murphy’s outside shoulder. It went over his inside shoulder. The wrong shoulder. Louis Murphy couldn’t adjust in time to get the ball. However, Shane’s 41 yard punt was fumbled by KC’s Savage. Jon Condo, our long snapper recovered the ball.
We didn’t fair much better when it came to moving the ball after we re-gained possession.
However, Sebastian Janikowski’s 50 yard field goal was good.
I started thinking that perhaps we might do something.
We were up 10-3. We were handling the KC offense pretty well. We were struggling on offense ourselves, but we had time to get it together.
We didn’t.
It wouldn’t matter when Tommy Kelly just bulldozed his way to Matt Cassel and brought him down on an 8 yard sack. It wouldn’t matter when the defense gave up a 22. 6 yard play with 23 yards needed on a 3rd down. Even under review, they didn’t get the first down mark.
It wouldn’t matter that Shane punted 52 yards, with Jon Condo allowing only an 8 yard return.
It wouldn’t matter that on one pass play Bush was open over the middle because for some odd reason one of the officials felt a need to step right in front of him.
What did matter was Louis Murphy dropping a ball in his hands.
What did matter was the missed assignment on a 4th and 1 play for them. Charles ran for 44 yards for the score to tie the game.
What did matter was when in response, on a deep ball that should have been caught, Darrius Heyward-Bey jumped when I don’t think he really needed to and let the ball go into his body instead of catching with it his hands. Result - incompletion.
What did matter was the tripping call on Robert Gallery that negated a 27 yard Murphy reception.
What did matter was the sack that Russell took right after this play.
It didn’t matter that Alston was able to stop Savage for single yard return on 55 yard punt by Shane Lechler.
What mattered was the 41 yard pass play to David Bowe. That was the first play of the drive that ended in KC going ahead 13-0 on a 25 yard Succop field goal.
What mattered was that even though we needed 12 yards on a play JaMarcus Russell threw only a 9 yard pass. Adding insult to injury was the fact that Mario Henderson was called for a 2nd holding penalty on back to back plays.
By this time, I was wishing the game would just end. It was long and painful to watch.
Somewhere along the game - both place kickers missed field goals. Somewhere between this holding call and the end of the game, KC scored another field goal.
Probably the most painful thing was realizing that Darrius Heyward-Bey was out of bounds on one of the last pass attempts by Bruce Gradkowski and having it stand as a reception after review.
Why was that painful? It gave the Raiders fans hope that we’d pull the game out.
The ball was at the KC 26 yard line. We had 38 seconds, no time outs, but only 26 yards to steal a win.
All hopes were dashed when Darrius Heyward-Bey , again the intended target, ended up somehow hitting the ball in the air and tipping the ball to KC.
We had no time outs. We couldn’t stop the clock. They had the ball.
End game.
What bothers me was the misses and the miscues.
I am still having difficulty with Sebastian Janikowski missing his first field goal attempt of the season on a 46 yarder, pushing it wide left.
I have trouble understanding how I can watch Darrius Heyward-Bey warm up before games, catching balls with his hands, yet when it’s game time, he tries to catch against his body, mis- times his jumps and drops balls.
I have trouble getting how we miss first downs by throwing the ball only 9 yards when we need 12 yards.
I really don’t understand how we can go for a 4th down play, fumble away, have it be a no play because there was a time out called, only to punt away. AFTER a time out.
I can’t get it through my head how Russell can still not be stepping into the pass , even when he has room and time, like the pass to Myers that ended up bouncing in front of the rookie tight end.
I don’t know how JaMarcus can continually miss open receivers.
I don’t know why we still mis-manage the clock so badly.
I wish someone could explain why Johnnie Lee runs every direction but towards the punter when he catches a punt. When he catches a punt. He seems to like to watch them bounce by him more and more lately. Something else I don’t get.
I don’t know why we can’t seem to block for Holland who at least runs in the right direction on kick off returns.
I don’t know how we can miss tackles that allow big plays that lead to scores.
I don’t know how we can be missing so many of the fundamentals that could make this team good.
After having 2 weeks to prepare for a team with a worse record than us, a team we had already beat in their house, I don't know how we can mis-fire so badly and not even score after the first quarter.
We aren’t even mediocre any more. We are just plain bad.
Two QBs with sub-50 quarterback ratings.
8 dropped passes that should have been receptions.
3 plays of 30 yards or more allowed by our defense.
Another of over 20 yards allowed.
We had 2 plays for over 20 yards.
I have little hope that something is going to happen for us before next week.
We have no idea who the starting QB will be. We have no idea if we’ll explore the wild cat option with Darren McFadden again. The lame excuse about the offense struggling didn’t work on me. The offense hadn’t been consistent when we used it to begin with!
I figure being Shane’s going after one of Slingin’ Sammy Baugh’s punting records, maybe he couldn’t do any worse than Russell or Gradkowski behind center.
It will be between Frye and Gradkowski though, because there is no way that we can defend the “Franchise QB of the Future “ tag we so wrongfully pinned on Russell. We can't keep saying he's the guy, when he so obviously isn't. It's just a pity that it took so long for Coach Cable to decide he doesn't give us the best chance of winning. It seemed obvious to me that this was the case several games ago.
He wasn’t happy he got benched again. He finally got fired up about something. Too little and way too late.
I can only hope this means there’s some type of performance/play time clause in his contract that will somehow save us money.
We are missing something and it’s more than consistency by just about every position on our offense. At this point I have to think it’s heart and desire, though the lack of fundamental skill by our alleged skill players is glaring.
I know I missed the team that played in the first quarter. I wonder where they went...
Maybe they can show up and play 60 minutes against the Bengals?
For now, I can hope.
As ever,
Win, lose or tie, RAIDERS til I DIE!
BlitzChick
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