It didn’t take long for the Raiders to show that they wouldn’t be shut out for the second straight game on Thursday night and it became clear by the end of the first quarter that their performance against the Chargers would bear no resemblance to the one they turned in against the Vikings last Sunday.
The Raiders led 21-0 after the first quarter and they demolished the Chargers 63-21 in a complete reversal of how things went for them in their 3-0 loss to Minnesota. It was a club record for points in a game and the third-most points any team has scored in the Super Bowl era, which interim head coach Antonio Pierce said is the kind of history that he wants the team to make.
“We were on the wrong side of history. Well, we’re on the right side now and that’s the way we want to be,” Pierce said, via the team’s website. “Turnovers, points, they always come in bunches. For us, it became a frenzy. You saw it on defense, you saw it on offense, special teams jumped in it. Just look at the sideline. If you didn’t see it, you could hear it. Hats off to our team responding four days after what just happened here previously.”
Pierce added that the team will get a couple of days off before getting to work on preparing to face the Chiefs on Christmas. The score in that game is likely to fall somewhere in between their last two outings, but it’s hard to know just what to expect from these Raiders from week to week.