The Oakland Raiders will miss the playoffs – this much is clear even before Week 17. After twelve victories last year and a season remembered for Derek Carr’s dramatic injury just before the start of the post-season, the screwed-up 2017 season could be considered a slip-up. However, this would be too simple: the raiders’ problems are deeper and affect players who should be wearing this franchise.
Sometimes a game is the symbol of an entire season. Things that haven’t worked out all year round go wrong, problems that occur again and again are omnipresent and decide the game, and the players who worry fans and coaches are not there at the decisive moment. Symptomatic, even.
One such match was the raiders’ bankruptcy at the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday evening,”We didn’t do what it took to win the games. This is how we can sum up our season. We haven’t done enough”, Quarterback Derek Carr should then put on record to paraphrase himself:”As I said before, we win and we lose as a team. But you can always look for responsibility with me.”
After the defeat against Kansas City two weeks earlier, Carr had already said:”We weren’t good enough and you can unload it all on me. Don’t blame a coach or other player. It’s all my fault.”
Of course, this doesn’t correspond to reality and Carr is honored that he stands before his fellow players in the best quarterback responsibility. And yet: a certain spark of truth is in his statements. This season, Carr is more part of the problem than the solution. The Raiders are one of the big disappointments of the current season, and the question that many Raiders fans take home with them at the start of their off-season is: How bad is it really about the team?
Oakland’s offense was one of the NFL’s most consistent last season. The raiders weren’t particularly explosive and didn’t shoot teams out of the stadium in a row – the term “precision machine” is more likely to apply here. 29 touchdown passes were only confronted with seven interceptions. Offensive Coordinator Bill Musgrave conducted a passing offensive that matched Carr’s strengths: short timing passes, with yards after the catch.
A total of 47.6 percent of Carr’s passing yards came about after the catch. Marcus Mariota (38.9 per cent), Brock Osweiler (39.6 per cent), Kirk Cousins (40.2 per cent) and Dak Prescott (41.8 per cent) put this high figure in the right perspective. Thus, Carr’s weaknesses were transferred and the work of the Offensive Line was significantly facilitated.
Carr’s injury shortly before the start of the playoffs made the hopes for this season even greater, so that even the forthcoming move to Las Vegas was pushed into the background. Last but not least, because the commitment of Marshawn Lynch, who is at home in Oakland and admired by the fans, seemed to give the offense the missing piece of the puzzle.
The disillusionment is all the greater now. A few days before the end of the regular season, the raiders are facing the shattered pieces of their season. And while the Defense had the expected problems for most of the time, it’s the off-season offense that is the big problem child. And that starts, here you can take Carr literally, also with the quarterback.
This leads back to the Eagles game and back to the symptomatic effect of the game. After Carr and Amari Cooper had hung up a 63-yard touchdown early in the second quarter, one had the impression for a short moment that a knot might have broken. Coach Jack Del Rio had after all demanded a few weeks ago that you simply had to play “courageously” and “carefreely” in order to play more Big Plays. But it happened – the exact opposite.
Carr threw only ten passes, which flew at least five yards down the field, out of which three came in (1/6.8 YDS, 2 INTs in the second half of these throws). Only five of his passes flew ten yards towards the end zone, two of them arrived:”They didn’t allow us to have any more deep passes,”Carr resigned afterwards.
If that’s not enough to symbolize Oakland’s passing game this season, he had to wait until just before the end. Up to the decisive scene: At the score of 10:10 with 57 seconds on the clock, the pressure of the Eagles came through – and Carr threw a devastating interception just before the midline.
Under offensive coordinator Todd Downing, a close friend of Carr’s, the offense has no answers. It began with the then surprising bankruptcy of Week 3 in Washington, and since then a pattern has been observed again and again: as soon as teams were able to eliminate Oakland’s short pass game, the raiders lacked alternatives. Carr shows some alarming tendencies, the eyes quickly move away from the receivers and towards the pass rush, again and again he suspects Rusher, where there are none at all.
No quarterback gets rid of the ball faster on average than Carr (2.36 seconds). Against Pressure and everything that goes beyond the short pass game, Carr is one of the worst quarterbacks of the NFL this season, and according to Pro Football Focus he had to fight with Pressure at 15 of 32 snaps against Philly. His balance: 2/12.9 yards, 2 interceptions. Plays, which lasted at least 2.6 seconds, brought him to four out of twelve. This season, 43.9 percent of the NFL’s passports arrived here, the second weakest value of the NFL.
Sometimes absurdly bad and dropped performances of his two star receivers Michael Crabtree and Amari Cooper as well as a slight regression in the offensive line – which still belongs to the top 10 – have not simplified the task for Carr. But the raiders have to be careful now: The trends that the 26-year-old is currently developing, especially against pressure, can quickly get rocks rolling that can no longer be stopped.
In other words, a quarterback who develops a fear of the pass rush rarely gets rid of it. Play calling and general scheme must help him here, Carr needs more help than some people had thought before the start of the season.
After Carr had made significant progress over his first three NFL seasons, no one had such a setback on the screen. Carr is at a critical point in his development as far as the behavior in the pocket and the passing of his reads is concerned, he now sometimes shows tendencies like in his rookie season.
And this despite the fact that Lynch shows exactly what they had hoped for: 2.98 yards after contact with opponents per run are the fifth highest value in the league. Here you have to question the coaches whose game plans often caused frowning: Despite a good offensive line, a good running back and a more than ailing pass game, only the Lions (22.7) and the Dolphins (22.5) have on average fewer runs per game than Oakland (23.1).
Here, the outlook for the raiders is positive: Game plans that focus more on the run game are a comparatively small screw that is relatively easy to turn. Above all, however, the Defense has shown clear upward tendencies since the exchange of coordinators.
Over the first few weeks of the season, Oaklands Defense was one of the most vulnerable in the NFL. Despite a superstar in Khalil Mack, the pass rush was toothless, the lineback corps was desolate and in the secondary the gaps predicted in the run-up to the season were uncovered so mercilessly. Then John Pagano took over the defense in Week 12 – and almost as if at the push of a button everything got better.
Pagano attached directly to the right bolt, the pass rush. While under his predecessor Ken Norton Jr. Bruce Irvin, for example, spent 17.4 percent of his defensive snaps in coverage, this figure has fallen by around ten percent under Pagano. According to its qualities, Irvin is used as a pass rusher and has hung up five of its 7.5 bags since Week 12. What’s more, Pagano’s pressure schemes are much more efficient, especially stunts, but also middle lineback flashes play a role in confusing opposing O-lines.
Especially the Edge-Rusher have more freedom on the Line of Scrimmage, again and again you can see that they do not blindly attack individual areas of a stunt, but look for a possible weak spot in fractions of a second. Over the first eleven days of play, Oaklands Defense allowed opponent running backs of 45.8 receiving yards per game according to Pro Football Focus, and since then this figure has dropped to 27.6 yards per game.
In the case of opponents’ out-routes, Completion Percentage (81.1 to 58.6 percent), Yards per Target (6.23 to 3.14) and TD/INT ratio (a touchdown to three interceptions) have dropped significantly since the Coordinator exchange, and the Big Plays collected have been noticeably reduced. Sean Smith, in particular, showed a marked improvement under Pagano, while David Amerson, Obi Melifonwu and Gareon Conley were barely deployed due to injury.
As shaky as the offense presented itself schematically and individually in 2017, the progress in the defense over the past few weeks may give Raiders fans hope for the future.
One could easily argue that Oakland’s 2017 season is also due to normal regression. At the end of the 2016 season, the raiders had a score difference of only 31 points. Normally, 12-4 teams have significantly more. Together with Kansas City, Oakland also led the league in Turnover-Differential (+16), including 14 Fumble-Recoveries – the ultimate “lucky situation” in football. Some setbacks in these areas were therefore to be expected.
The hope was that the team and especially the offense would make such a clear step forward that these things could be caught. But the opposite was the case, and in the NFL, where almost all teams are extremely close together, it will quickly turn into a disappointing season. In particular, however, it is important to keep an eye on Carr’s development. Also and especially for the possibly new coaches.
“When things get difficult, many people like to blame others,”Carr added after the defeat in Philly,”I have always tried to stand here and take the blame. That’s how I was brought up, and I always will be. When things get tough, I’ll fight. There’s no doubt in my mind that I will correct the things I have to correct.”
If he succeeds, the Raiders still have a promising future ahead of them. However, this is not a matter of course.