Oakland Raiders: A Few Keys To Victory Over Kansas City Chiefs

Do Not Beat Themselves

This Raiders team has incredible potential. They have impact players at almost every key position and have shown that they can play with anybody in the league. This is a good team. A solid team. A team with an upside that might even be higher than the 2002 Super Bowl team.

But this is also a team that has a penchant for making terrible, boneheaded, and incredibly costly mistakes.

The Raiders have had a couple of touchdowns wiped out already this season for horrible mental gaffes. The first was Amari Cooper breaking a rule he later said he wasn’t even aware of after he caught a long touchdown against Altanta – after stepping out of bounds and then coming back inbounds. What made that hurt even more was that it could have potentially given the Raiders a lead – and the game.

The second touchdown was wiped out because the team took a terrible penalty at an even more terrible time. A third touchdown last week was wiped out simply because Cooper didn’t drag his feet inbounds before stepping out – it’s a bummer, but that sort of thing happens.

Next: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly vs. Chargers

But this season, we’ve seen a procession of self inflicted wounds from this Raiders team that has done an incredible amount of harm. Be it wiping out touchdowns, killing off drives, or just nullifying a good play, the Raiders are killing themselves. And that has to stop.

It’s true that the Raiders are a young team and they are learning a lot. But if they truly have championship aspirations, they’ve got to learn to stop beating themselves with oftentimes, careless mistakes.

Championship clubs do not beat themselves. And the Raiders need to stop doing just that if they aspire to be a championship caliber club.