1. The Good: The entire Las Vegas Raiders’ offense
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The Las Vegas Raiders racked up a total of 442 yards in their victory against the Philadelphia Eagles, another great showing for this offense. Furthermore, Derek Carr going 31 of 33 for 323 yards and two touchdowns shows that he’s playing at an elite level. Of course, that’s not difficult to do when you have receivers like Foster Moreau and Bryan Edwards, who combined for receptions, 103 yards, and over ten yards a carry. They also had two touchdowns in Sunday’s win, making them a deadly duo.
Speaking of deadly duos, we have to discuss the tandem that is Joshua Jacobs and Kenyan Drake starting with Jacobs, who had six carries for 29 yards, 4.8 yards a carry, and one touchdown. Then there was Drake, who had 14 carries for 69 yards, 4.9 yards carry, and a touchdown of his own. Finally, several receivers helped lighten Carr’s load, including Hunter Renfrow and Zay Jones, who combined for eight receptions, 101 yards, and some of the most significant gains of the Raiders’ day.
2. The Bad: Raiders’ third down efficiency
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Now that we got the positivity out of the way, let’s take a moment to digest the fact that the Las Vegas Raiders were 3 of 9 on 3rd down conversions during Sunday’s game. It’s anyone’s guess how they managed to do that and still win the game, but it has to have diehard Raiders fans worried about what happens when the team goes up against more brutal talent. Furthermore, there is the possibility of an injury occurring between now and the end of the regular season, which could only make this statistic worse as time goes on.
For a bit of perspective, the Raiders were 4 of 11 on 3rd down against the Denver Broncos last week, meaning that this is only getting worse for some reason. What’s interesting here is that they know how to run up the score. They even know how to get the ball down the field for big chunks of yards, but what will that matter if they can’t convert on 3rd down? It seems to be the offense’s Achilles heel now, and there is no sign of it getting better anytime soon.
3. The Ugly: The defense in the fourth quarter
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While the Philadelphia Eagles scored on the Las Vegas Raiders in the game’s opening quarter, the defense showed improvement when they didn’t allow a single score for back-to-back quarters. Unfortunately for the Raiders’ defense, they would give up 15 points in the game’s final quarter and seemed to be imploding at times. Now, critics can argue that it doesn’t matter since the team picked up the win, but what will happen when they come up against a better defense?
With that being said, we should give credit where credit is due, especially after wrapping up Jalen Hurts for two sacks during the game, but there is no excuse to give up that many points at the end of the game. The Raiders also forced two fumbles during the game, which is a good thing, and definitely could help them in future games. However, the only problem is that they gave up a total of 358 yards, 224 of them being through the air.
