Oakland Raiders: A Few Players Who Must Step Up Against Baltimore

The Oakland Raiders are on a two-game skid and have a plethora of issues they must contend with – if they want to get back on the winning track, these players must step up and play large.

The Oakland Raiders, last year, didn’t record back-to-back losses during the regular season – a feat it seems like they hadn’t accomplished in a dog’s age. But this year, with the team that actually has legitimate title aspirations, Oakland has lost two in a row – in horrendous fashion – and have stumbled their way to a 2-2 mark through the first quarter of the season.

There are a thousand things we can point at to explain Oakland’s horrific showings in both Washington and Denver – turnovers, subpar quarterback play, dropped passes, subpar play from the offensive line. But it might be best to just sum up the past couple of weeks in just a few words – the Raiders have really stunk up the joint.

This team suddenly has a lot more issues than anybody thought they had coming into the season, when the defense was thought to be the team’s Achilles Heel – and not unjustly so.

But to be fair, the defense has been adequate in three of this season’s four games – the Washington fiasco was an absolute abomination – and it’s been the offense that’s let this team down.

Coming into the year, Oakland’s offense was thought to be among the league’s elite – maybe one of the best offensive units in all of football. And while they certainly looked the part over the first two games of the season, these past two games, they’ve looked barely more competent than some of the NFL’s bottom feeders.

Oakland, for the past two games, has looked like absolutely punchless and heartless. They’ve looked a lot like a throwback team from those heady days of Dennis Allen – which is to say they’ve looked bad. Real, real bad.

But, it’s a new week and a new chance to get things right. They’ve got a chance to come correct and right the ship – a task made more difficult with the injury to quarterback Derek Carr – but a task this team can still accomplish.

To do that though, they are going to need some players, like these, to really step up their games…