It’s there. It’s tangible. He completed 14 of 22 passes for 140 yards and scrambled for 23 more as he was able to avoid a few of the heavy pressure applied by the Raiders.
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In Sunday’s loss to the Minnesota Vikings, it was All-Pro Adrian Peterson who did the damage, running for 203 yards, 80 of those coming on a late sprint for a touchdown.
It’s all of those things, it’s everything, and this is the fifth time in nine games that it has happened. The Raiders (4-5) lost their second straight to fall further behind in the AFC playoff race.
“A good play on their part”, Thorpe said.
The Raiders aren’t bad. Patterson bobbled a squib kick from Sebastian Janikowski before taking it back all the way untouched for his third career kick return touchdown, making it 20-14 at the break.
Which might get pretty frustrating for the locker room and coaching staff, eventually. “As soon as you know it’s two-deep, you’ve got to go to the run….” “This week was the passing game and we did well passing, but we allowed them to run all over us for 200-plus yards or whatever it was”.
“We’re sitting where we are at 4-5”, Del Rio said, “a lot of football in front of us and really looking forward to the challenge of dusting ourselves off and getting ready for this next opportunity”.
That’s easy to say about any quarterback, and Carr, with a 7-17 career record, has shown this year how much better he can be with strong weapons, such as receivers Amari Cooper and Michael Crabtree, around him. There’s none of that at all.
“I’m sure you’re all aware, all right, that we’re in first place”, Zimmer told the players after a 30-14 victory Sunday at Oakland in a video posted on the team website.
Now the Raiders need to reignite their season.
After those three games the Raiders face the Denver Broncos. A Packers win moves them up to 7-3 against a 7-3 Vikings team and ties it up.
Or Sunday’s game, when the Vikings were a little bit better than the Raiders in every phase, including coaching. I think we were competitive. “I got a good look at it when I dropped and turned”.
Former Raiders linebacker Bill Romanowski questioned the play selection in his role as an analyst on CSN-Bay Area’s “Raiders Postgame Live”.
So there’s no reason for the Raiders to douse the season, and that was the locker room mood Sunday.
But in three weeks it starts to get tougher again – Kansas City, Denver and Green Bay.
The truth may very well be that the Raiders just got beat by a better team, but after the outstanding offensive performance the Raiders put up against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 9, you would expect the Raiders to put up more of a fight against Minnesota. Normally, we practice hard, we study hard, work hard and play hard, but that night was just disgusting.
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By playing smart football and grinding teams down while trusting their defense, Minnesota has turned itself into one of the most complete teams in the league. The lead lasted just 13 seconds. He carried the ball 26 times against the Raiders, and his most explosive touch was his final one.
