By then, Oakland coach Jack Del Rio had gained enough confidence in his offense that he felt comfortable going for the win, instead of the tie, on the road.
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New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (9) drops back to pass in the first half of an NFL football game against the Oakland Raiders in New Orleans, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016.
Williams, technically a second-year player out of Florida State who spent his rookie season on injured reserve, started against Oakland. “I didn’t really ask for any feedback there”, Del Rio explained.
“We had preached all offseason – so many of these games come down to two-minute situations, and wanting to be in that situation defensively and practicing it so much”, Laurinaitis said. That statement turned into an early test, as Drew Brees and the Saints pushed the Raiders to the brink on Sunday. He was coaching his team to win the game, not to avoid losing it. There will be a ton of things we see on film when we make the corrections, but I don’t want to jump to any conclusions.
Oakland gambled with a 2-point conversion that Derek Carr converted with a pass to Michael Crabtree for the winning points with 47 seconds left.
Oakland’s victory in New Orleans was just one of 10 games that came down to the wire on the NFL’s first Sunday.
Del Rio displayed some monstrous cojones at the end of the team’s week one game in New Orleans. The Saints’ previous longest play from scrimmage was as 96-yard passing play from Billy Kilmer to Walter Roberts on November 19, 1967, the franchise’s inaugural season.
As Olawale moved back into the traditional fullback position, he was tracked by Saints linebacker Michael Mauti which tipped the Raiders and Carr to the fact that New Orleans were in man-on-man coverage – specifically a single high safety formation known as man-free. He needed just three passes to lead a go-ahead 84-yard touchdown drive midway through the fourth quarter and two more for 34 yards to give Lutz a chance. He went 4-for-5 on Philadelphia’s opening series while leading a touchdown drive that ended with a perfectly placed 19-yard pass to Jordan Matthews in the corner of the end zone.
“He gave me a great ball there, and he did that the entire game”, Crabtree said of Carr. Amari Cooper had 137 yards receiving on six catches, and rookie running back Jalen Richard had a 75 yard touchdown run in the fourth for the Raiders.
2016 marks my 20th year as a Raiders fan. For a while it looked like new defensive coordinator Dennis Allen, who took over after Rob Ryan was sacked late last season, had solved most of the problems of the recent past.
“I have to make those kinds of calls and guys have to trust my judgment”, Del Rio said. New England still had LeGarrette Blount, whose 13-yard helped get the Patriots into field goal range to beat the Arizona Cardinals.
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Prater missed an extra point wide right with 4:04 left in the season opener, a miscue that almost cost the Lions.
