Oakland Raiders: Patience With Norton’s Defense Starting To Pay Off

The Oakland Raiders clinched their first playoff birth since the early part of the century and was led in doing so by an unlikely source – their defense.

Yeah, so maybe all of those calls to fire Oakland Raiders DC Ken Norton Jr. might have been a little – premature. In the early part of the season though, it was certainly understandable. After all, you give up almost 70 points and more than 1,000 yards of offense in two games and your seat should be uncomfortably warm.

But HC Jack Del Rio‘s faith and trust in Norton is beginning to pay big, big dividends as this defense is starting to round into playoff form and has led this team to punching their ticket to the postseason for the first time since 2002.

When quarterback Derek Carr suffered a gruesome injury to his finger against Carolina, a collective gasp sounded throughout the Raider Nation. Everybody held their breath until Carr came back into the game. But when he returned, he very clearly wasn’t the same guy.

And he hasn’t been the same electric gunslinger since that game. In the three games since his injury, Carr has gone 55/106 for a completion rate of 52 percent – which is almost nine points below his season average. He’s also averaging a meager 197 passing yards per game – a sharp decline from the 283 yards per game he was racking up before his injury.

The silver lining though, is that the Raiders have gone 2-1 in the three games since Carr injured his finger – 3-1, if you count the comeback win against Carolina where he initially sustained the injury – and he has thrown five touchdowns to just two interceptions.

But the offense – the passing game specifically – has taken a sharp turn for the worse. How can it not? The injury Carr sustained was gruesome and is impacting everything he does as a quarterback. Driving that point home is the fact that since the injury, he’s taken snaps exclusively from the pistol or shotgun formations.

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In the past three games, Carr has thrown for 260 against Buffalo, 109 against Kansas City, and 200 against San Diego. The passing game is clearly experiencing a power outage. Which isn’t at all surprising.

Thankfully, the Raiders’ running game has helped pick up the slack. In the past three games, a ground attack led primarily by Latavius Murray and Jalen Richard have started gashing opposing defenses, going for 139 against Buffalo, 135 against Kansas City, and 145 against San Diego.

But in what can only be a much better sign as the playoffs are quickly approaching, with the offense struggling, it’s Ken Norton Jr.’s defense that is starting to step up and lead this team.

That is an unpopular statement among many fans and some of the “experts” in the sports media, to be sure. Many are still of the opinion that Oakland’s defense remains one of the worst in the league and is the thing that will prevent the Raiders from being a serious championship contender.

But to believe that, you would have to deny the fact that this defense has taken some tremendous strides forward and is beginning to play at a very high level – dare we say, a championship-caliber level?

This is not to suggest that there aren’t still some things that need to be worked out and cleaned up. Quite the contrary. This is to say though, that the defensive situation isn’t nearly as bleak as some paint it to be. Not nearly as bleak as it was for the first few weeks of the season.

Consider, it was the defense that sealed the win over Carolina with a late strip sack of Cam Newton. It was the defense that sealed the win over Buffalo with a strip sack of Tyrod Taylor. Though they lost the game, the defense gave the Raiders back to back turnovers to start the second half against Kansas City – both in the red zone – and Oakland managed just three points out of it.

And against San Diego this past week, it was the defense that led this team to a playoff berth-clinching win.

Oh, things got off to a bumpy start for the defense, there is no question. San Diego took the opening drive and marched 91 yards for a touchdown – the killing blow being a 47 yard bomb to Travis Benjamin to put the Bolts up 7-0.

On that opening drive, Philip Rivers dissected the Raiders defense, going 4/5 for 82 passing yards. No question about it, Rivers gutted the Raiders defense on that drive.

But, after that first drive, the Oakland defense clamped down in a big way. San Diego, which has had one of the league’s higher powered offenses for much of the year, gained a total of 172 yards – for the rest of the game.

That’s right, following that opening drive, Rivers finished the game with just 206 passing yards – in other words, after lighting up the defense for 82 yards on the opening drive, Oakland’s D stepped up and held him to just 124 passing the rest of the way.

In other words, of San Diego’s 263 total yards of offense for the game, 91 of them came on one drive alone – the opening drive.

The defense held San Diego to 73 yards on the ground, forced two turnovers, and oh yeah, held an offense that was putting up an average of 26 points a game to just 16.

It was a pretty dominant performance for this much maligned defensive unit. They stepped up and delivered a win when the offense couldn’t get it going. And it was this franchise’s biggest win in fourteen years.

There are definitely some areas this defense can clean up – must clean up. Especially with the playoffs lurking right around the corner. This defense has got to show up and put together a complete sixty minutes of dominant football – the sort of football this defense played in their week nine showdown with Denver.

Oakland’s defense has taken some incredible strides and is playing the sort of football that can help the team make a deep playoff run – in spurts. They need to eliminate the spurts and play at that level with that intensity for a full sixty minutes.

If the Raiders play the sort of defensive football they did for the final three quarters against San Diego last week, this is a team that can win and win big. It would be a team that could win it all.

Ken Norton has been on the hot seat for much of the season. He’s taken incredible amounts of slings and arrows from the disenchanted. But he trusted in the process. The team has trusted in the process. And we’re starting to see it all coming together. We’re starting to see this team playing playoff-caliber defense.

And with the playoffs looming, it couldn’t be coming at a better time.