How did we get here? The Raiders came into their Thursday Night game fresh off a shut out at home last week to the Vikings. A game that ended wth a 3-0 Vikings win. In fact, the Raiders hadn’t scored a touchdown in six quarters, dating back to the second quarter against the Chiefs prior to their bye week.
And at the half, the Raiders were leading the Chargers 42-0.
The broke their scoreless and touchdown streak on their opening drive. Zamir White — who was replacing an injured Josh Jacobs — punched it in for his first career touchdown.
A strip sack by Malcolm Koonce got the Raiders the ball back at the LA 42-yard-line and the Raiders drove for a second touchdown on a deep ball from Aidan O’Connell to Tre Tucker.
Another fumble gave the Raiders the ball at the LA 31 and they again took advantage of it with a touchdown. This one on a diving 22-yard grab by Jakobi Meyers.
That gave them 21 points and it was just 12 minutes into the game. That is more points than they had scored in the previous 11 quarters combined.
From there, we had four straight punts — two from each team. But that final punt from AJ Cole was punched out on the return by DJ Turner to give the Raiders the ball at the LA 14-yard-line. Two plays later, Michael Mayer was wide open for an easy touchdown to make it a 28-0 lead.
At this point, the Raiders offense had their highest scoring game of the season. Prior to this, the Raiders offense had only scored over 20 points once. That was when they scored 23 points against the Giants in Antonio Pierce’s first game as interim head coach.
The Chargers would drive to the Vegas 35-yard-line on their next possession, but the Raiders defense stood them up and they turned it over on downs.
Then the Raiders drove for a fifth touchdown. This one with O’Connell lining up wide left and Brandon Bolden taking the direct snap and running 26 yards for the score. The Chargers had clearly just given up.
The 35 points was the most the Raiders team had scored all season, topping the 30 points they scored against the Giants.
And just to pour it on, the Raiders added one more touchdown just before the half to make it a 42-0 game, with O’Connell and Tre Tucker connecting for their second TD of the game.