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

Ugly: The Execution Of That Play Call

The play call itself was entirely horrible. It was stupid. As stat geeks have noted, since the infamous Super Bowl play, Marshawn Lynch-led teams have now thrown it from the one-yard line just four times – and have failed all four times, and thrown two interceptions to boot.

A statistic Gruden, when informed of it, called, “cute.”

Las Vegas Raiders

There’s a reason you don’t risk a throw when the quarters are that tight, and you have Lynch in the backfield – Marshawn can get it done. And when you’re down 17 points, with a chance to get yourself back into a game, why would you take that risk?

As egregious as the play call was though, the execution of it was even worse. For the umpteenth time this season, we saw Carr make a terrible read, and even worse throw. It’s something we’ve seen too many times this season from Oakland’s franchise signal caller.

Of Carr’s eight interceptions – through five games – five have been in the red zone, and three have been in the end zone. His picks have had a massive detrimental impact on this team, and has cost them games.

Yes, it’s a new system, and it’s going to take time to master. Rome was not built in a day, and all that. And yes, it took former league MVP Rich Gannon a season to really gel with all of the nuances of a Gruden offense.

At the same time, though, in his first season at the helm, we didn’t see Gannon making this many poor decisions, and terrible throws, either.

The smart play in that situation would have been to throw it away, and draw up another play for second down. Instead, Carr rolled the dice, tried to squeeze it in, and the team paid the price for it.

Which helps explain their current 1-4 record.