It’s been a challenging season for the Raiders and their 2-9 record heading into the Thanksgiving holiday means the remainder of the season will be mostly about playing for pride.
The Raiders aren’t going to make the playoffs, but players and coaches will still be playing for their jobs. There is no tanking in the NFL, but the bright side to all the losing is the fact that the Raiders should end the season in position to get one of the top quarterbacks in the upcoming draft.
That’s silver lining.
Unfortunately, there are still six weeks left in the regular season and Sunday was a reminder of why “tanking” isn’t an option for NFL teams. Not only did the Raiders get swept by a division rival, but the players, coaches and fans had to listen to Denver head coach Sean Payton take a victory lap at the microphone after the game.
But first, Payton took the opportunity to compliment his own efforts.
“Our team a year ago doesn’t win this game,” Payton said of the Broncos 29-19 win over the Raiders. “But this team did, and you build some grit. We won the turnover battle again. We were the better team today. We didn’t always play like it, but we’ll get those things cleaned up.”
From there, he complimented the way the Broncos minimized the stars on the Raiders’ roster.
“Eighty-nine (Brock Bowers), ninety-eight (Maxx Crosby), nineteen (Jakobi Meyers). Those are really good players, but we didn’t hear from them a lot,” Payton added.
It’s possible the Broncos wouldn’t have beaten this Raiders’ team a year ago, but the current team in Las Vegas is nowhere close to the team it was a year ago.
As messy as the coordinator situation for the Raiders was last year, Luke Getsy seemed to take the offense to a lower level this year. Under Getsy, Davante Adams quit on the team and Gardner Minshew has shown significant regression. The offensive line has been a disaster, season-ending injuries to star players have decimated the Raiders’ defensive line and now we’re seeing hints of finger-pointing in press conferences.
None of that happened a year ago.
The Raiders have big decisions coming after the season and, for now, it seems most likely that the team will move on from Pierce after the season.
If Pierce can get to four or five wins on the season, he might be able to keep his job, but that scenario looks like an uphill climb at the moment.
As for the Broncos, Payton might be tooting his horn a little early. If the Raiders were playing any kind of competent football, Denver would be 5-7. Additionally, the Broncos have only beaten one team with a winning record, and that win came against the Atlanta Falcons (6-5).
Nevertheless, as Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcels once said “you are what your record says you are,” and the Broncos are 7-5. If the season ended today, they would be in the playoffs.
As of now, the best-case scenario for the Raiders’ season is probably to come away with the one of the top picks in the draft. They have to walk away from the offseason with a franchise-caliber quarterback.
Denver was able to add a quarterback in the draft last year and Pierce credited Bo Nix in the Broncos win on Sunday.
“Quarterback play. Bottom line. quarterback play,” Pierce said on Monday. “Last night [we faced] a rookie quarterback and we were bringing the house at him. Very first play of the game we came after him. At the end of the game, we was coming after him. The did never flinched. [He] didn’t blink.”
