Busters: Jon Gruden, Paul Guenther

This team’s inability to close out games was its most glaring problem. Good teams never feel like they’re out of it. This team never acted like they had a shot, even in the times they were ahead. The offense couldn’t score in the second half and the defense couldn’t stop anything.

Personnel was an issue as well. Gruden made three trades for wide receivers last year, giving up a third-round pick, two fifth-round picks, and a sixth-round pick and getting almost nothing out of any of them.

First was Antonio Brown, who went off the deep end before the season started, then Trevor Davis who was just about useless even before he fumbled his way off the team, and finally Zay Jones who averaged a pathetic 7.3 yards per catch and topped out at 27 yards receiving in a game.

The offense was far too conservative, even in times is absolutely needed to go big. Too many times they just went home.

As for the defense, there were too many times where the Raiders were so bad, it couldn’t be placed on one or two players or players were so wide open it was impossible to tell who was supposed to be defending on the place. More likely it was just a bad call and the opposing offense just exploited it.

Add Guenther placing all his hopes on a linebacker who was one bad hit away from being banned indefinitely – something that happened in week four – and you have the makings of a bad year on defense.

The most crucial collapse of the season came in that four-game losing streak from weeks 12-15. The first two games the offense scored just 12 combined points while the defense gave up 74. In the third game, the defense gave up three second-half touchdowns while the offense didn’t score at all and they lost 42-21.

In the fourth game against the Jaguars, the Raiders jumped out to a 16-3 lead only to choke it away, getting outscored 17-0 in the second half and lose 20-16. Gruden and Guenther were “Top Busters” for that game.

It is widely looked at as the gut punch for the Raiders season. They were only still in it for the final game because of some very lucky favors from other teams to help them stave off elimination for another week.

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