Oakland Raiders: Writer Thinks They May Have Hit Their Offensive Ceiling
By Kevin Saito
The Oakland Raiders didn’t lose a lot of game time to injury last season, which is normally considered a good thing – but it apparently bodes ill for their offensive unit.
In their first year under the Jack Del Rio regime, the Oakland Raiders took tremendous strides toward being relevant once more. Given that they posted a 7-9 record, the team didn’t quite get where it wanted to go. But it’s certainly a lot farther down that road than they’ve been since Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers ruled the box office and people actually still liked Nickelback. (hey, they had a number one hit back in 2002!)
But to hear USA Today Sports writer Jason Lisk tell it, this Raiders team – the offense specifically – may have already hit their ceiling. In an article that appeared on USA Today’s “The Big Lead” on Wednesday, Lisk opines that the Raiders finished in the middle of the NFL pack offensively, and did so with a team that was pretty well fully healthy.
From Lisk’s piece:
"“Last year, the Raiders had zero missed games among their quarterback, starting running back, top two wide receivers, and best receiving tight end. Center Rodney Hudson and right tackle Austin Howard both missed three games, while the rest of the offensive line started everyone as well. As a result, the top 10 players on offense played in a combined 154 of 160 possible games (96.3%), leading the league.”"
Lisk goes on to compare Oakland’s “health” with other teams who lost big name players such as the Colts and Andrew Luck, Buffalo and LeSean McCoy, Charles Clay, and Sammy Watkins – and on and on and on.
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If you read between the lines, you can see the point he’s making in a convoluted, roundabout kind of meandering way. And that point seems to be that because Oakland’s top ten players played in 154 of 160 games – and they still finished in the middle of the pack – fans shouldn’t get their hopes up too much for this team being an offensive juggernaut. Or of making as big of a leap forward as some are anticipating.
Oversimplification and lack of nuance much?
It seems as if Lisk looked at a stat sheet, saw the number of games each player played and wrote his column off of that. And nothing but that. What it doesn’t seem like is that Lisk understands how things on a football team are interconnected and dependent upon one another. He doesn’t seem to get that a butterfly flapping its wings in Oakland can cause a typhoon in China.
And he really doesn’t seem to get that just because a player is on the field, he might not actually be healthy.
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While it’s true that only Rodney Hudson and Austin Howard missed game time with injuries, Lisk doesn’t take into account the fact that other players were hurt. Key pieces to Oakland’s offensive puzzle. He also doesn’t take into account, how those injuries impacted other areas of Oakland’s game.
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Early in the second quarter of Oakland’s season opening game against the Bengals, Derek Carr hurt his hand and did not return to the game. No, he didn’t end up missing subsequent time, but that shows how flawed Lisk’s reasoning is. Carr shows up as having played in every single game, but a bad tone was set in game one after he missed more than half the contest.
Amari Cooper was injured in week eight against Pittsburgh. And he very clearly was not right after his injury. There were several games where he was used primarily as a decoy since he couldn’t perform at the same level he had in the first eight games.
Evidence of that can be seen in the reduction of his numbers over the first half of the season compared to the second half. Over the first eight games, Cooper had 45 receptions (on 72 targets) for 653 yards and four scores. Over the last eight, he had just 27 receptions (on 58 targets) for 417 yards and just two scores.
Cooper was clearly not the same player as he dealt with a nagging injury. The same can be said for center Rodney Hudson. Hudson injured his ankle and missed a game in week ten. It was an injury he then aggravated, which caused him to miss two more games. And Hudson, like Cooper, was never completely right after his injury.
The injury to Austin Howard – with the team already down Menelik Watson after his season ending injury before the season started – cost him three games as well. Which pretty well shot down any sense of continuity the line had built.
Oakland’s offensive line had played very well overall in 2015. Pro Football Focus ranked them the sixth best line in the NFL for their efforts. But the injuries took a toll on this team. Having guys like Jon Feliciano playing – when he clearly wasn’t ready for it – hurt this team.
And it contributed mightily to their struggles this past season.
The reasons for Oakland’s offensive struggles last season are many and they are varied. It isn’t possible to point to just one thing and identify it as the culprit with any certainty. Especially given how interconnected everything in a team environment is. And where so much depends upon one person making the right block or one person fighting for a ball downfield.
And let’s not forget, being in the first year of a brand new system certainly didn’t help much.
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The idea that because the Raiders’ starting offensive group “officially” played in 154 of 160 games, they were the healthiest team in the league is laughable. All it took was watching this team perform down the stretch – a stretch that saw them lose six of their last nine games.
But then, judging by that article, Lisk didn’t bother actually watching the team perform and struggle. He actually may have never bothered watching the team at all. If he did, he might understand that things aren’t as black and white as he makes them appear to be.
This is a team that has barely scratched the surface of their potential. And now, entering their second year in Del Rio’s system, they are a team that is comfortable and is going to make some real noise this year. Despite what naysayers like Lisk believe, this is a team that will thrive.