Oakland Raiders: The good, bad, and ugly in preseason loss to the Rams
By Kevin Saito
The Oakland Raiders dropped an overall ugly affair to the Rams in their second preseason game – let’s take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Halfway through the preseason schedule, and the Oakland Raiders still have a lot of questions that need answers – and they’re starting to run out of time.
HC Jon Gruden is taking a little bit of heat from some corners for not playing the majority of his starters today.
He can’t really be faulted, given the fact that in a few weeks, they’ll be squaring off with this same Rams squad when the games actually start to count for something.
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Well – not exactly the same, Rams squad, since many of the guys on the field today, likely won’t be there when the season starts. Ditto that for this Raiders squad.
But, the desire to keep everything he can close to the vest, this close to the start of the regular season, is completely understandable.
And somebody should really drop a penalty flag on the NFL schedule makers who threw this preseason schedule together.
Preseason games are normally sloppy, vanilla affairs as coaches try to balance the need to get their starters some reps, with the possibility of exposing them to injury, as well as not wanting to reveal too much of their playbook too soon.
As far as sloppy affairs go though, this one got off to a particularly ugly start for the Silver and Black. With a lot of guys vying for roster spots and/or playing time, some of them sure didn’t seem like they came out to play.
The team picked up in the second half and made a better game of it, but it’s very clear that Oakland’s backups have some work to do.
There are some positives to take away from this game, as well as some thing that clearly need to be worked on and tightened up.
So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the good, the bad, and the downright ugly from Oakland’s preseason loss to the Rams…