Raiders preseason: Was offense, defense bland on purpose?

From pass happy plays to stopping the run woes, Las Vegas looked like it wanted to find out how players would react

Antonio Pierce is a realist.

The Las Vegas Raiders head coach may have lofty aspirations for his football team, but at the same time, Pierce isn’t spouting bombastic rhetoric when it comes to the offense.

“We’re probably not going to be, to be honest, a juggernaut offense,” Pierce told ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler earlier this month. “Would I love to be? Yeah. To sit here and say we’re going to score 30 points a game, that’s not realistic.”

With offensive coordinator Luke Getsy in his first year as the play caller along with newly minted starting quarterback Gardner Minshew in his first year with the Raiders and Getsy’s system, you get the gist of Pierce’s sentiment to ESPN.

On the surface, Las Vegas has the looks of a ball control-style offense that sets the tone with a punishing run game. The epitome of what the Raiders want to do offensively is physical and violent run game that batters the opposition physically and eventually, mentally. When the opposition creeps up to deter the ground game, the Silver & Black take advantage and push the ball downfield through the air.

But that’s not what we saw in preseason action.

While the initial exhibition clash with the Minnesota Vikings had more balance — 24 pass attempts to 37 rushing attempts (31 if you take away scrambles by the quarterback — the game against the Dallas Cowboys was all out of whack, philosophically. Getsy and Pierce oversaw a Las Vegas offense that threw the ball 54 times to just 17 rushing attempts (16 if you take away Minshew’s scramble).

Why so pass happy?

That’s the best way to see how Minshew and Aidan O’Connell produce and react with high-volume passing attempts.

O’Connell threw the ball 20 times complete 14 passes for 96 yards with one touchdown and an awful interception that Dallas returned for a touchdown. Minshew, on the other hand, threw 21 times completing 10 passes for 95 yards with no touchdowns or picks. Undrafted free agent Carter Bradley finished 8 of 13 for 56 yards with no scores or interceptions. The performance by both Minshew and O’Connell was taken into account when the decision on which one would be the starting signal caller was made this past Monday.

The decision was a culmination of everything offseason from practices to live preseason snaps and there’s high likelihood come Week 1 and beyond, Getsy’s Raiders offense will feature balance rather than all-out aerial attack. Perhaps some of the things we saw in preseason action will carry over into the regular season — such as Las Vegas attacking vertically with speedy wide receiver Tre Tucker and seeing tight ends Michael Mayer and Brock Bowers lining up at fullback.

But it isn’t a reach to see more ground and pound, short and intermediate passes to Davante Adams, Jakobi Meyers, Mayer and Bowers, with the deep shots to Tucker here and there, when games start to count and Las Vegas becomes attune to Getsy’s West Coast offense variant.

Getting Defensive

Earmarked at the strength of the team, Patrick Graham’s Raiders defense is going to be the identity and backbone of the Silver & Black in 2024. (Ok, perhaps if Minshew Mania catches fire, then the mustached marvel can garner favor to the offense).

Jest aside, edge rusher Maxx Crosby, defensive tackle Christian Wilkins, linebacker Robert Spillane, cornerback Jack Jones, and safety Tre’Von Moehrig are slated to be the tone setters at every level of Las Vegas’ defense and will be counted upon to produce and lead the unit.

But through two preseason games, the Vikings and Cowboys dropped explosive plays on the Raiders defense including slicing through the unit on the ground like a hot knife through butter. Granted, this is preseason and the first-team Las Vegas defense wasn’t on the field for a lot of time, however, it’s of concern to Pierce. Particularly the opposition racking up a total of 279 yards and two touchdowns on 53 carries (a healthy 5.4 yards per carry).

“Yeah, it’s still an issue. I mean, we just weren’t good enough,” Pierce said of his team’s run defense. “I think over 114 yards in the first yards in the first half. Again, not the standard. A lot of leaky yards, we’re not getting off blocks, we’re not being violent enough up front. We’re too talented, too skilled, too much length to stay blocked. And again, that’s something I know our coaches are going to harp on in individual.

“We’ll continue to work on that, but that’s not the standard. It’s now two weeks of it, and obviously we got to do more in practice.”

Similar to the offense, what we’ve seen so far from the Raiders defense likely differs from what’s going to be deployed Week 1 and beyond. And while the leaky defense merits some concern, it’s providing plenty of teach tape for Las Vegas to improve and gear up for a meaty initial slate of games the first quarter of the 2024 campaign.

If Las Vegas is vanilla in the regular season and we see similar results to what’s happened thus far in exhibition games, then by all means, get loud about it.