The Raiders are as bad as any NFL team has been for a decade. They looked so bad on Sunday at Philadelphia that it’s almost impossible to understand how they won two games this year.
After Sunday’s loss at Philly — the Raiders’ eighth in a row — coach Pete Carroll was asked whether he’s feeling any pressure, internally or externally.
“There’s so much pressure that comes right from here,” Carroll said, referring to himself. “I mean, if you can even imagine, nobody can pressure me more than myself, and my expectations and the standards that I’ve lived by and worked by are so high that they’re almost impossible to meet. But that’s the only way I know how to live and the only way I know how to coach.”
His expectations clearly aren’t being met. Not even close. He rejected the idea that his team, which looked like it has quit, has reached a breaking point.
“I don’t sense that at all,” Carroll said. “I don’t think there’s that issue. I think we got beat. This is a very well-loaded team. And they just did their thing today, on both sides of the ball, and they really took it to us. We couldn’t stop their offense and get off the field on third down, and a couple penalties got in our way and they were able to do what they needed to do. They ran for a bunch, they threw really highly efficient stuff, wasn’t taxing for them. We couldn’t make it hard on them. And we couldn’t couldn’t get out of our way offense, we couldn’t make any yards. And so third downs and all that, I don’t think it’s some big psychic change that took place. I think we just got whipped by a really loaded football team that on this day had their way.”
Still, it was the eighth straight loss. And their second shutout in eight weeks, with a historically woeful 75 yards of offense. So how did that happen?
“Yeah, our inability to just get the ball moving where we have some kind of substance of a run game to play off of,” Carroll said. “When you don’t convert on third down, you just don’t get the chances. I mean, we said this, unfortunately, guys, it’s the same kind of story. When that’s the result of what happens with us trying to move the football, the games kind of pattern themselves and that’s not hard to see that. There’s no mystery there.”
There’s no mystery about the fact that the Raiders currently are overmatched, on a regular basis. Carroll was asked whether Sunday’s game is an indication of perhaps how far they are from being competitive.
“I don’t know that,” Carroll said. “I don’t know that answer. I don’t know.”
He should know this. As noted by Josh Dubow of the Associated Press, the Raiders are the first team of the Super Bowl era to allow four or more sacks and rush for fewer than 75 yards in six straight games. (Dubow also points out that Pete Carroll’s son, Brennan, is the offensive line coach and run game coordinator.)
Carroll nevertheless believes his players are trying.
“These guys fought their ass off,” Carroll said. “They fought their ass off. That was the result. They didn’t stop fighting. That was the result of our play right there. And I have a lot of respect for the roster we just played against, and maybe they didn’t look like it in the last couple weeks or whatever, but they played like they were capable, and we couldn’t stop [them]. And so that’s what I saw.”
Carroll thought he was seeing something different in the preseason, when he expressed a belief that the Raiders could be competitive.
“I had nothing but wins and background in [my] history and all of that, to set our expectations and to maintain the standards that we work by,” Carroll said. “And that’s what we’re doing. We’re still doing it. We’re still practicing hard, we’re still working hard, we’re still studying hard. The guys are giving good effort. They’re in the weight room. They’re fighting their tails off. The only good thing happened, we didn’t get anybody hurt today, you know? But they’re doing all we’re asking them, and this is the result of it against the world champs last year, who maybe weren’t playing quite like that for a month here or whatever, but they look like it today. They look like a great team today.”
And the Raiders looked (again) like a team that doesn’t belong in the NFL.
As explained last night, it doesn’t look sustainable. And it’s hard to imagine that one offseason can fix it, even if ownership (with Mark Davis expressly giving Tom Brady a sweetheart deal for his supposed expertise in football matters) decides to clean house again.
It can get worse before it gets better. There’s simply not enough talent. And the highly talented players who are there (all two of them) may decide to try to get out while they can. (Wouldn’t you?)
The Raiders have three more games to play before it’s time to make decisions. Brady, of course, won’t be available to roll up his sleeves and get to work on fixing the mess he helped make until after the NFC Championship, three weeks after the regular season ends.
The best first step could be, frankly, for Davis to entrust the football operation to someone who has the experience, the capability, and the time required to turn things around. Currently, it’s as bad as it’s ever been for a franchise that was once one of the proudest in the league.
