Oakland Raiders’ season review – a glance at the team’s another failure – NFL Special (Part I)
For Oakland Raiders, reaching the National Football League (NFL) playoffs is a distant dream, which they have not been able to achieve since a long time.
The last NFL season, in which Raiders came quite close to reaching the postseason by topping the American Football Conference (AFC) West division, did not completely serve their cause and they were eliminated after the regular season.
The failure was more or less the result of their own faults and Raiders, throughout the season, remained inconsistent eventually allowing other teams of the division to climb up the division ranking.
In this space, we are going to have a look at Raiders’ performance in all the games they played in the last season and try to ascertain the main problem.
Let’s start with the first game.
At Denver
Raiders played their first game of the regular season against the Denver Broncos, who also had not reached the playoffs since a very long time.
It was a close encounter where at a given period of time, the game was either controlled by Broncos or Raiders as a fierce competition was not seen.
Broncos made the first scoring move of the game by scoring a field goal in the first quarter.
Raiders’ scoring move came in the second quarter. They started with a touchdown and added three field goals to gain a handsome lead.
Broncos attempted to reduce the deficit in the next quarter and got a touchdown and a field goal. Both teams scored a touchdown each in the final quarter as Raiders won the game, 23-20.
At Buffalo
After registering a strong start to the tournament, Raiders once again played an away game. Their next opponents were Buffalo Bills.
Raiders were looking in an exploding form after defeating Broncos in the last game. Both teams defended well in the first quarter, which did not see any scoring move.
Raiders managed to grab some points in the second quarter when they scored two touchdowns before allowing a field goal. They scored another touchdown in the same quarter and gained an 18-point lead.
After the halftime, however, Bills began progressing. In the third quarter, they scored two touchdowns to reduce the deficit to only four points.
In the final quarter, Raiders managed two touchdowns, but Bills got three and won the game with a margin on just three points.
The final score settled at 38-35.
Raiders’ defensive tackle, Richard Seymour, said after the game:
"Not a whole lot to say other than that effort isn't going to be good enough. We didn't seem to give the offense any help in the second half. That's on us. It isn't good enough."
Against New York Jets
Raiders were performing well, but were slightly sloppy on defence. The defence struggled slightly against New York Jets in Raiders’ first home game of the season, but the offence ensured a victory.
Both teams went neck and neck in the first quarter and scored a touchdown each.
Jets grabbed 10 points by scoring a touchdown and a field goal in the first 10 minutes of the second quarter, but Raiders replied by doing exactly the same in the last five minutes and both teams entered the halftime with score tied, 17-17.
Raiders scored a touchdown in the third quarter to take the lead, which was increased early in the final quarter when they got another touchdown.
Jets reduced the deficit to seven points by scoring a touchdown, but Raiders added a field goal to get the decisive 10-poin lead.
The final score settled at 34-24.
To be continued...
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