Oakland Raiders: Victory checklist for Week 3 against Minnesota Vikings

5. Stop Giving Yards Away

After so many years, this probably sounds like a broken record. But since the problem hasn’t been fixed in all these years, it still bears repeating — the Raiders must avoid giving away yards by way of picking up stupid penalties.

Shockingly enough, the Raiders aren’t leading the league in penalties, thus reversing a decades old trend. At least through the first two weeks. Thus far, the Raiders have amassed 16 total penalties, giving up 114 yards — and seven first downs — in the process.

Okay, at this point you might be saying that’s not terrible. And you’d be correct. From a purely numbers standpoint, they could certainly be doing a lot worse.

However, when you look at the timing of some of these penalties, it makes you want to beat your head against the wall. Penalties that have come as the team has been successfully been converting a third down. Penalties that stall a building momentum and kill a drive. Penalties that wipe out a big play. We’ve seen them all.

Penalties are part of the game and no team is going to avoid them. It happens. But when it’s mental mistakes that are drawing the flags, that hurts even more. To date, half of Oakland’s 16 accepted penalties — that’s eight if you’re scoring at home — have been pre-snap penalties.

You can defend some of the penalties brought on by physical play. Sometimes it really is a judgment call on the part of the refs — and in many cases, it shows a referee’s poor judgment making skills. Just ask the New Orleans Saints about that.

Be that as it may though, if you’re shooting yourself in the foot before the ball has even been snapped, you’re putting your entire team in a very bad spot. The Raiders have improved as a team but they still aren’t good enough to overcome the stupid, unforced, mental errors.

Gruden is big on extolling the virtues of mental toughness — that needs to include not making stupid, mental errors.