Oakland Raiders: The good, bad, and ugly from week five loss to Chargers

The Oakland Raiders, needing a win desperately, laid an egg against LA – let’s look at the good, bad, and ugly from that week five loss.

Well, you have to hand it to Jon Gruden and the Oakland Raiders – at least they didn’t suffer a second half collapse, and yet another demoralizing defeat in their week five tilt with the Los Angeles Chargers.

No, this week, they just came out and stunk up the joint from the word go.

The optimistic among us thought, that after last week’s rousing, come from ahead, come from behind, overtime win against a feisty, and better than they’ve been in recent years, Cleveland Browns team, these Raiders may have finally turned a corner, and were onto something good.

Yeah, that belief by some of us, was obviously very misplaced.

The Raiders dropped what was a winnable game to slide to the very basement of the AFC West, and join just a handful of other teams – Indianapolis, Atlanta, San Francisco, New York Giants, and Arizona – at 1-4 on the season.

Even the Browns and Lions have two wins! C’mon now!

Suffice it to say, little has gone right, or according to plan in Gruden’s second go ’round at the helm of the good ship Oakland Raiders.

Or is it?

In the wake of this latest disaster, there are some out there (on the Internet, of all places – go figure) suggesting that this season is nothing more than a tank job – though the reasons for said tank job vary.

Some believe it’s to undermine GM Reggie McKenzie, and make his draft record look terrible – like he needs any help with that. Some believe Gruden is jockeying for drafting position to better maximize those extra draft picks acquired in the Khalil Mack trade.

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And others just think Gruden has turned into Heath Ledger’s nihilistic version of the Joker, and just wants to watch the world burn.

And based on the early results, and head-scratching roster moves since he’s returned, it’s hard to necessarily dispute any one of those beliefs out of hand. Maybe.

The more likely scenario though, is that Gruden and the team are experiencing some growing pains as he molds this team in his image, and gets it headed in the way he wants it going – do recall, in his first stint at the helm, the Raiders went 8-8, didn’t look particularly good in any one stretch, and had plenty of difficulties in all three phases of the game.

After that though, saw a brief period of success – the kind of success this organization hasn’t had since that last brief period of Gruden-led success.

All that matters though, is what happens between those white lines. And at the moment, very little good is happening there. This is a bad football team, playing some bad football.

Is there time to turn it around? In theory, yes. But, they’d better get on the stick PDQ at this point. The margin for error is very close to zero at this point.

With some hopefully, better things ahead, as they enter a stretch of winnable games, let’s look back at one that is entirely forgettable, and take a look at the good, bad, and ugly from their week five loss to the Chargers. – the day late, and dollar short edition, of course.