Oakland Raiders: A few keys to victory over the Cleveland Browns

Must Improve Red Zone Efficiency

With last Sunday’s miserable 2-5 showing in the red zone – including two failures to punch one in from a yard out – Oakland’s efficiency inside the 20 stands at 44 percent. They’re four-for-nine inside the 20, and not all of those have been touchdowns.

That ranks the offense twenty-third inside the 20. Which, given that they’re the sixth-ranked passing offense – and sixth-ranked offense overall in the league, yet the twenty-eighth ranked scoring offense – highlights quite the disparity.

With their plethora of weaponry, this Raiders offense can move the ball, almost at will. Yet, they bog down once they get into scoring position, and can’t quite bring it home. They can rack up a lot of yards, but they’re not racking up a lot of points to go with it – those two failures to punch it in from the one-yard line last week only further underscoring the problem.

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For this offense, and this team, to get to where they want to go, they’re going to need to be better inside the 20, as well as putting points on the board overall.

Defensively speaking, the are doing okay inside the red zone – though, they could stand to improve. Through three games, they’ve given up points on five of their opponents 10 opportunities inside the 20. That 50 percent red zone percentage makes them the ninth-ranked unit in the league.

However, from an overall scoring standpoint, the defense needs to tighten up considerably, as they’re ranked twenty-first in the league.

In Cleveland, they’re getting the twenty-second ranked offense overall, and the twenty-first ranked scoring offense. The Browns are putting up just 20 points a game, but inside the 20, they’re downright deadly.

Of their seven trips into the red zone, the Browns have scored five times. Their 71.4 percent scoring rate, ranks them seventh in the league. And their defense ranks seventeenth in the NFL, having given up points on six of 10 of their opponents’ chances inside the 20.

Without Michael Crabtree there for him to look to in the team’s red zone offense, Derek Carr seems a little bit lost. He’s got to figure it out, and he’s got to figure it out quickly. And defensively, the team needs to keep buckling down and keeping teams from hanging points on the board inside the 20.