Raiders: Notes from Week 15 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars
By Sean Basile
It was a sour end to a storied franchise’s reign in the city of Oakland with this week’s heartbreaking loss. It’s once again time to close the door on an era of Oakland Raiders football.
The Oakland Raiders went down this week to the Jacksonville Jaguars after blowing a 16-3 halftime lead in which the Jags rattled off 17 unanswered points in the second half to win 20-16.
Another week. Another tough loss for a Raiders team that showed such promise for most of the season.
The Raiders now sit at 6-8 and on the verge of being eliminated from the playoffs entirely as teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans sit above them in the playoff hunt for the last postseason Wild Card spot.
I hate to say it, but in my mind, this season is over and done with for the Raiders. Unless they pull off something crazy and win both of these last two road games against the Los Angeles Chargers and Denver Broncos, they’re going to finish below .500 for the 14th time in the last 17 years.
They’ve done some great things this year and by no means were the trainwreck I thought they would be coming into the season, but ultimately, they were simply outmanned and outplayed once again.
My feeling is there is no better time to make a change of city than right now because as we see, they’ve done very little the past (nearly) two decades.
Oakland is a great football city that’s gritty and intimidating. Oakland fans are great football people who are passionate and rambunctious. The Black Hole is one of the toughest places to play, especially at night.
But it’s just time for a change, and Las Vegas is going to work a lot better than most people think it will for this franchise. Things may seem down for Raider fans right now, but this is still your guys’ team and they’re going to make some noise in the coming years in the change of scenery.
On to some brighter news:
We made some money this game by taking the Jaguars +6.5. It went (basically) how I thought it would go.
I got fooled a bit after the Raiders jumped out to the 16-3 lead, but as expected, Gardner Minshew who (per confirmation) does in fact wear jorts and aviators 5-6 days a week, brought the juice to this lowly Jaguars team and finished with a quarterback rating of 102.8 and two fourth quarter touchdown passes to Chris Conley.
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Say or think what you want about one Minshew. You see the bandanna, you see the jorts, you see him rocking a cold one in each hand and you see a Baker Mayfield 2.0 frat boy.
He may or may not be the franchise quarterback of this jags team moving forward, but you know what, he throws a pretty good football and he brings energy to his team — a lot more energy on offense than they’ve had in the past decade (and probably history).
Look, I’m not exactly sure who stays on the roster or coaching staff for the Jaguars come this offseason.
But Minshew has done nothing to prove himself unfit to lead this bunch next season, and I would be very interested to see how he performs with a better coaching staff, better offensive scheme, and better players around him.
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Back to the Raiders to close it out.
It wasn’t the end to an era that Raider fans wanted, but you know what, it’s about to turn into a new beginning for this team with a lot to look forward to come 2020. They found their running back for the foreseeable future in Josh Jacobs.
They cleaned things up between Derek Carr and Jon Gruden (at least from a third-party perspective). And they’ve found two key pass rushers through the draft that have nothing but the world in front of them in Maxx Crosby and Clelin Ferrell.
Looks can be deceiving; they definitely fooled me. But looking back at the Khalil Mack and Amari Cooper trades, it’s actually pretty evident to me that both were for the better of this franchise and have set the course for where they’re going right now as they head to Vegas next season.
Gruden looked out-of-touch with those moves, but now as we sit here in mid-December 2019, I think both moves actually benefited the team as crazy as that sounds.
Next. Raiders: Derek Carr booed off the field in disastrous Oakland goodbye. dark
There’s a lot to look forward to for Raiders fans even as the team leaves the city of Oakland. The Autumn Wind is, was, and always will be a Raider.