Oakland Raiders: Fans Cry Out, Will No One Rid Us Of This Meddlesome OC?

The Oakland Raiders will likely miss the postseason this year, in large part, because of first-year offensive coordinator Todd Downing’s mismanagement of his unit.

The Oakland Raiders dropped a pivotal game to division rival Kansas City on Sunday. It’s a loss that drops them to 6-7 on the year, and very likely, eliminates them from the postseason chase.

Unless the Raiders get a big time Christmas miracle, it’s time to start making other offseason plans.

It would have been nice and probably somewhat satisfying for Raiders fans everywhere had Downing gotten some variation of the treatment USC gave Lane Kiffin, when they fired him on the tarmac at the airport.

It would have, at least, given Raiders fans at least something to smile about on a dismal Monday if he’d been left there to find his own way home.

To be fair, the list of problems Oakland has had this year is long. Very long. Everything from Amari Cooper dropping balls, to Sean Smith still stinking up the joint, to Reggie Nelson being just this side of useless, to Derek Carr seeming to shrink on the big stages – very little has gone Oakland’s way this year.

It seems as if the great bounces of the ball and the magic the team had last season have all dried up.

Of course, the one thread of consistency throughout this long, miserable, up-and-down season, has been the horror show this offense has become under the “guiding hand” of first-year offensive coordinator Todd Downing.

Most realistic folks figured there would be some growing pains and maybe, a few bumps in the road, given that it was Downing’s first time in the Big Boy’s Chair. What nobody expected though, was for Downing to turn one of the league’s most dynamic offenses into an absolute dumpster fire.

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It truly boggles the mind, trying to figure out how adding Cordarrelle Patterson, Jared Cook, and Marshawn Lynch, to an offense that already featured Amari Cooper, Michael Crabtree, Jalen Richard, DeAndre Washington, Seth Roberts, and Carr, could actually make a team worse.

You could spend all day and half of tomorrow, tearing your hair out, trying to figure out how a team that was sixth in total offense last season, and seventh in points scored, suddenly slipped to nineteenth and twenty-first in those same categories this year, respectively, with all of that firepower, and still never figure it out.

But, then you look at Downing, Oakland’s post turtle of an offensive coordinator, and it suddenly makes sense.

This most recent loss to Kansas City is just a microcosm of the ineptitude that Downing has run the offense with all season long.

Kansas City’s defense this season hasn’t been very good, ranking thirtieth against the run, twenty-eighth against the pass, and twenty-eighth overall. Kansas City’s defense, statistically speaking, is worse than Oakland’s.

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And yet, despite that fact, Downing dialed up a game plan that saw the Raiders put up just 68 yards of total offense – and zero points – in the first half, and 268 yards of total offense for the game.

Carr finished the game with 211 passing yards, but entered the fourth quarter having notched just 69 of those yards. Once again, Raiders fans watched Carr pile up yards late in a game that was already well out of reach.

Yeah, you can make the argument that the players just didn’t perform. Didn’t execute. And that is undeniably true. However, Downing – as has been the case for much of this season – didn’t put the offense in a position to succeed.

As has been the case for much of this season, Downing didn’t properly utilize or maximize the talent he has on hand.

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO – NOVEMBER 19: Derek Carr /

Against Kansas City, as we’ve seen in so many other games this year, Downing did not come up with a game plan that attacked and exploited an opponent’s very obvious weaknesses.

Like say, maybe, running Lynch down their throats until the Chiefs proved capable of stopping him.

Or maybe, just maybe, attacking a very porous Chiefs secondary – a unit that was missing their best cover corner in Marcus Peters – with some deeper shots.

As Austin Gayle of Pro Football Focus notes, it’s not like it wasn’t there for Carr to exploit. He had success against Kansas City’s secondary.

#Raiders QB Derek Carr completed 6-of-8 passes for 95 yards and 1 TD on passes thrown between 10 and 19 yards in the air... Why only eight attempts? Beats me.
— Austin Gayle (@austingayle_) December 11, 2017

Knowing the Chiefs struggled against the pass, and were without Peters, and given Carr’s success with deeper throws, it begs the question – what was Downing thinking? Why was he not calling more plays designed to expose that very obvious flaw in Kansas City’s defense?

That’s been an unfortunate trend with Downing this year. He simply does not know how to scheme to exploit an opponent’s weaknesses. Nor does he seem to know how to maximize the strengths of the very talented roster he was given.

Downing has taken what was Oakland’s strength last year – a power run game – and seemingly removed it from the offense as a whole. Rather than letting that massive, athletic line get off the ball and straight punch people in the mouth, Downing moved to a zone-blocking scheme, which doesn’t play to their strengths and has affected the offense as a whole.

Worse than that, the running game, which was a staple of Oakland’s offensive game planning last year, has become almost an afterthought in Downing’s system. Although we saw an increased focus on the running game against Denver (37 rushing attempts) and the Giants (29 rushing attempts), those are the exceptions, rather than the rule.

For the year, Downing’s unit ranks dead last in rushing attempts. That’s thirty-second out of thirty-two teams. They’re averaging just over 22 rushing attempts per game this year – a number somewhat inflated, given the 66 attempts in the two games mentioned above.

It stands in stark contrast to last season’s squad that ranked eleventh in rushing attempts, with a touch over 27 per game.

And of course, as we all know, a potent ground game – or at least, the threat of a potent ground game – helps open up the rest of the field. It makes the play-action a viable threat – something that seems missing almost entirely from Downing’s playbook.

That’s something Bill Musgrave understood and used to his full advantage. Which is something of a sad commentary in and of itself – Downing has singlehandedly made people miss all of the “fireworks” and “pizzazz” of a Musgrave-led offense.

Yeah, noodle that one over for a minute.

Musgrave’s offenses may not have been super-flashy, but they were good at what they did, were efficient, and always went into a game with a plan that attacked and exploited an opponent’s weaknesses. Musgrave’s offenses, though lacking a lot of sizzle and pop, were competent – something that can’t be said for Downing’s group.

And yet, despite the overwhelming mountain of evidence that Downing is neither fit, nor cut out for the role of offensive coordinator, HC Jack Del Rio is apparently going to stick with him for the remainder of the season.

Jack Del Rio tells @DamonBruce on @957thegame that Todd Downing will remain offensive coordinator for the rest of the season.
— Jimmy Durkin (@Jimmy_Durkin) December 11, 2017

While some might say, it would cause too much chaos and upheaval to change horses now, most of us would say – well – something inappropriate to a forum such as this. The Raiders have a guy in-house already who’s been with the team for a while, who knows the system inside and out, and who has experience as an offensive coordinator.

Mike Tice.

If continuity is the problem that has everybody’s knickers in a twist, if you remove Downing and replace him with Tice, the continuity remains intact and the issue is solved. It’s a non-issue.