You will rarely see a game where a team couldn’t get out of their own way quite the way the Raiders did on Sunday against the Steelers. There were some good performances in the game, but they were overshadowed by all the mistakes. And often times those mistakes literally wiped away those plays.
As always (or usually) we hand out the credit to those who played well before we get to those who tore it all down.
Ballers
LB Divine Deablo
Divine was feeling it in his first game back off injury, making plays all over the field. It was a tackle for loss on a catch in the flat that was the key play to end the Steelers’ first drive and force them to settle for a field goal. Then in the second quarter, he blew up a trick play and Justin Fields with it for a 13-yard loss that took them out of Vegas territory and ultimately ended the drive.
It was still a 7-6 Raiders lead late in the second quarter. A turnover gave the Steelers the ball on the Vegas 30-yard-line. But two plays later, Deablo picked off a pass over the middle to get the Raiders the ball back. At least for an instant he did. A roughing the passer penalty wiped it away and the Steelers kept the ball. They would ultimately get the touchdown, but on the two-point conversion, there was Diablo to knock it down to keep the score at 12-7 at the half.
Diablo would finish with six tackles, two for a loss, a sack, a QB hit, and a pass breakup (which he wasn’t credited for because it was on a two-point conversion).
DE Maxx Crosby
Early in the second quarter, the Steelers mounted their second scoring drive. But Crosby didn’t make it easy. On the second play, Justin Fields saw Crosby screaming around the right edge off the snap and instantly tucked it and ran for 14 yards. Two plays later, Crosby drew a holding penalty which got eight of those yards back. The Steelers still managed to get a couple catches and a run to make it to the 31. Maxx stopped them there with two pressures leading to incompletions and they settled for a field goal.
The next drive, Crosby would draw another holding penalty. Two plays later he would get another pressure to force an incompletion. Three plays later they punted it away.
Early in the fourth quarter, with the score still 22-7, Crosby filled his gap, leading to a tackle for loss, and blew up another run in the backfield for a loss. They couldn’t get it back and punted. He finished with a half sack, three QB hits, and two tackles for loss and affected the game even more than the stats showed.
TE Brock Bowers
The Raiders drove for a touchdown on their opening drive and the offense went through Bowers to do it. He laid a key block on a seven-yard run. Two plays later he caught an eight-yard pass. Next play he blocked on a nine-yard run. And finally, on second and goal from the two, Bowers cleared the path for the touchdown run.
To lead out the third quarter, Bowers made ten-yard catch followed by a nice catch for 18 yards on a ball thrown behind him while he was running right to left. Unfortunately that catch was wiped away by a holding penalty on Andre James.
Even without that catch, Bowers led the team with nine catches for 71 yards.
Honorable Mention
RB Alexander Mattison — Had 19 touches (5 receptions) for 65 yards and a touchdown. And had a second touchdown called back by a very suspect illegal man down field penalty.