Woeful.
That would be the word du jour for the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday, who were pummeled into submission worse than anyone at Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 227 in a 38-10 road loss to the Buffalo Bills.
The Raiders’ game-opening drive was the only bright spot, as quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo led Las Vegas on a five-play, 75-yard drive that culminated with a touchdown and 7-0 lead.
The Bills went on to outhit, out-muscle, outplay and outscore the Raiders, 38-3 over the next 57:16 of game time.
Garoppolo finished 16 of 24 for 185 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions for a 68.9 passer rating.
Flipside, Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen completed 31 of 37 for 274 yards and threw three touchdowns to finish with a 124.5 rating.
The Bills outgained Las Vegas 450 yards to 240.
Here are three woeful takeaways from the game:
Road Woes
The Raiders dropped to 3-8 on the road under McDaniels, with two of those wins coming against Denver. Sunday marked the worst road loss under coach Josh McDaniels. In the eight losses, the Raiders have been outscored by an average of 9.5 points per setback while being outscored by 58 points overall. In addition to their AFC West trips to Inglewood and Kansas City to play the Chargers and Chiefs, respectively, the Raiders have four other trips to Chicago, Detroit, Miami and Indianapolis.
“When you go on the road and play against a really good football team and they’re well coached, got a lot of good players, obviously we got to coach and play much better than we did today,” McDaniels said. “So that’s my responsibility. Obviously, we’ve got to do a better job and get our football team to do more things right and if we’re gonna compete against teams like this in this type of an environment.”
Rushing Woes
The Raiders finished with 55 yards rushing on 15 attempts, an average of 3.7 yards per attempt. The 55 yards were the second-fewest during the McDaniels era, with a 38-yard performance at New Orleans on Oct. 30, 2022 being the lowest. The Raiders’ six worst rushing performances under McDaniels came on the road, where they averaged 58.1 yards per game in those games. Meanwhile, Josh Jacobs, the NFL’s reigning rushing champion, finished with -2 rushing yards on nine rushes. Per Elias Sports, it was the first time since the 1970 merger a reigning NFL rushing champion finished a game with negative rushing yardage.
“We got to be able to block people and get the runner started,” McDaniels said. “I thought a lot of times we couldn’t even really get into the line of scrimmage without being touched. I take responsibility for all of that and I’m gonna have to do a better job of figuring out what we need to do to get JJ going.”
First Down Defense Woes
The Raiders allowed an average of 5.6 yards on first down, including two penalties on Las Vegas defensive back Nate Hobbs, one for 25 yards and another for five. Take those out and the Bills still averaged 5.0 yards per play on first down in the game, getting half the yardage they needed for another first down. Buffalo averaged 4.4 yards on its first play of each drive, getting 44% of the yardage it needs, creating solid momentum for its drives.
