Today the Chargers and Raiders set up for their second match-up of the season. The first one occurred in the season opener in which the Raiders offense had its worst outing of the season.
That game saw the Raiders offensive line struggle to keep the Chargers out of the backfield. Derek Carr was sacked five times in the game. Former Raiders edge rusher Khalil Mack had three of those sacks.
When Carr wasn’t getting sacked, he was turning the ball over. He threw three picks and had two fumbles, including the one that ended the game. As you might expect, the strip sack was caused by Mack.
Despite those sacks and turnovers, the Raiders found themselves within a score late in the game.
Most of that had to do with the instant success of Davante Adams who had 10 catches for 141 yards and a touchdown which gave the Raiders a shot late in the game. That shot fizzled out with the same issues that had been cropping up all game — sacks and another turnover. But Adams was still encouraged.
“I look at it as something that’s encouraging because we beat ourselves today,” Adams said after the game. “That’s not to take anything away from that team over there, because that’s a really good team, they did a lot of good things today, but you turn the ball over the way that we did today and you still have the opportunity to go down and win says a lot about you as a team, fighting through adversity and still our defense did it in the second half, we just got to find a way to take care of the ball a little bit better and go down there and win. So, I look at it as something we can feed off of moving forward and try to keep it as positive as possible.”
The Raiders weren’t able to feed off it immediately. That season-opening loss became 0-3 before they got their first win. And a second three-game losing streak in week 8-10 dropped the team to 2-7 on the season and in utter disarray.
Derek Carr was in tears at the podium after the loss to the week 10 loss to the Colts and players were yelling at each other in the locker room. All that encouragement, even in the season-opening loss was a distant memory.
But with the Raiders wins the past two weeks, the team is feeling a lot better about where they are. Carr has been sacked just two times combined and has thrown two interceptions. Meanwhile Josh Jacobs has 463 yards of offense and two touchdowns.
Safe to say Carr is feeling a bit better than he was a couple weeks ago.
“When I went back and watched that game this week, you just look at it and you’re like ‘Oh my goodness.’,” said Carr this week. “It’s really cool to see the growth . . . you see the growth in each person within the schemes, within what’s being asked of them, and hopefully we’re getting better. I feel like we are when you turn the tape on. But we still don’t feel like we’ve arrived by any stretch.”
Adams is also feeling encouraged again with the re-match with the Chargers on tap.
“I think we’ve come a long way,” Adams said this week. “It’s just about situational awareness more so than anything. Not penalizing ourselves and putting ourselves in tougher down and distances. I feel like that’s what we did this past game and that’s why we performed the way we did on third downs. You make it a hell of a lot easier if you got two, three, four five, six yards to go, rather than 29. That makes a hell of a difference for yourself. We just got to be more disciplined and continue doing what we’re doing.”
The Chargers are sitting at 6-5, the same record as the Seahawks after losing to the Raiders last week. And if a four-turnover, five-sack loss can make these Raiders feel encouraged, they certainly think they have can pull out a win today considering how well they’ve played in recent weeks.