Oakland Raiders End The 2017 Season In Fitting Fashion – Horribly

The Oakland Raiders capped off their 2017 season much in the same way they played most of the year – horribly – and got their coach fired in the process.

Poet TS Eliot may as well have been describing the 2017 performance of the Oakland Raiders, when he wrote, in his poem The Hollow Men, “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.”

If you sat through the drek that was Oakland’s season finale against the Chargers, you would have seen a team that most definitely went out not with a bang, but a whimper. And not a particularly loud whimper at that.

Oh, they made a game of it – for about a quarter and a half, anyway. At one point, they even led 10-7. But then, a long touchdown drive by the Chargers was followed by yet another costly Derek Carr interception that, in turn, led to another long Chargers touchdown drive, putting the Bolts up 20-10 at the half.

And it only got worse from there.

Though the scoreboard read 30-10 when the final gun sounded, the game wasn’t even really all that close. As has seemed to be a common theme for this team, this season. Too many times, we’ve seen this team look lifeless and ill-prepared, with an offensive game plan that seems like it was drawn up by a five-year old playing Madden.

Oakland’s ineptitude this season was a stunning reversal of fortune for a team that came into the year with legitimate Super Bowl hype and a roster more talented than they’ve had in almost two decades.

Yet, despite that influx of talent, Oakland, for much of the season, looked listless. Like they didn’t know what they were doing. Like they’d forgotten how to do those things they did so well last season. And they made horrible mistake after horrible mistake, costing them dearly almost every time.

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Much of the blame for Oakland’s failings and shortcomings this year can be fairly spread around, since there are a lot of culprits.

Derek Carr clearly regressed this year. Perhaps the injuries he’s sustained over the last couple of years have hampered him – mentally, if not physically – but he was too fast to check down, too fast to get rid of the ball when pressured. He made too many costly mistakes, turned the ball over at very inopportune times, and put his team in bad positions time and time again.

He was very clearly not the same quarterback who’d earned his $125 million dollar deal this year.

Offensive Coordinator Todd Downing also deserves a healthy portion of the blame as well. Despite being something of a hot commodity and having some buzz as an up-and-coming offensive coordinator, he only managed to prove that he’s not ready for the big chair.

His game plans were terrible, he stripped away the team’s identity, and took them away from doing what they do well. Downing was so eager to put his own stamp on the team, that he switched out of the power blocking scheme that had made the Raiders the sixth-best offense in the NFL last year, and switched them to a zone blocking scheme that doesn’t play to their strengths, and the offense paid the price.

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Rather than being one of the most dynamic and potent offenses in the league like they were in 2016, with Downing calling the shots, the Raiders became one of the most anemic and predictable units.

And of course, we can’t forget Ken Norton Jr.’s contributions to the effort. It wasn’t bad enough that we’d already suffered through two seasons of his ineptitude, we had to sit through another ten games of it this season before Del Rio got wise and cut him loose.

Under Norton, not only was Oakland’s defense one of the absolute worst in the league, even more damning, they never showed signs of improvement. Never showed progress. Never offered a glimmer of hope that they could be better. That they would be better.

Like Downing, Norton didn’t seem to know how to scheme to take advantage of an opponent’s weaknesses, nor scheme in a way to take advantage of his team’s strengths. The result was a dumpster fire of a defensive effort week after week after week.

The real indictment against Norton though, is how well the defense played under John Pagano, once he assumed control of the unit. They were far from perfect and there were still some bumps in the road, of course. But under Pagano, the defense was a much more formidable unit.

The game with the Chargers was a microcosm of the entire season for these Raiders though. They were listless, lackluster, and devoid of that fire they had in their bellies last season.

All of this combined to make for one of the most stunning reversals of fortune in recent memory. A team that went 12-4 last season and seemed to be ascending, lumbered their way to a 6-10 record, well out of the playoff chase this year.

It all combined to cost Jack Del Rio his job, who told media that following the season finale, owner Mark Davis informed him of his decision to not retain the coach – despite Del Rio signing a four-year contract extension after making the playoffs for the first time since 2002, last season.

It’s unfortunate in that Del Rio, in just three seasons, took a Raiders team that were perennial doormats and laughingstocks to a team that was regaining respect and well on their way to relevancy once more, is not going to be able to see this through.

This is not to say Del Rio didn’t have his faults, he most certainly did. Letting former OC Bill Musgrave walk and retaining Norton as long as he did have got to be near the top of that list.

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But, a lot went wrong this year, on a lot of different levels, with a lot of different people, and it’s unfortunate that he’s had to pay the price for it.

Oakland’s 2017 season was a perfect storm of crap. After a loss to Kansas City back in week 14, tight end Lee Smith made the observation that the team came out and “pissed on their own leg.” That seems to be a pretty fitting sentiment that can be applied to the whole year.

And so, the Raiders head into yet another offseason filled with question marks and uncertainty. An offseason filled with turmoil, and upheaval once more. Big changes are coming to the Silver and Black this offseason, the question now is, will those changes be the right changes? Will those changes push this team forward or just push this team down once again?

2017 has been a year to forget for a lot of different reasons. And it only seems fitting that this Raiders team ended the season much how the played for most of the year – not with a bang, but a whimper.