Hindsight is 20/20, but if you’d really thought about it ahead of time, the Raiders did have a lot of things working against them in their trip to New York to play the Jets Sunday. All of which suggested a big letdown was a real possibility.
That letdown was Derek Carr throwing for just 127 yards on 15 completions, Josh Jacobs rushing for only 34 yards on 10 carries — his fewest yards and yards per carry (3.4) of the season, several dropped passes, three fumbles, 208 net yards while allowing 401, and scoring just three points while giving up 34.
Gruden stepped in front of the media to offer up some of the potential reasons for the dropoff in play across the board.
“We had four straight games go down to the last play of the game,” said Gruden. “Four in a row. Houston, Detroit, the Chargers, Cincinnati. The team’s fighting hard. I think sometimes fatigue might be a problem. You know the six-hour flight, we were delayed two hours getting in, three-hour time change, East Coast kickoff at 1:00 was hard when I coached a veteran Raiders team years ago.
“We are not a lot of experienced people when it comes to rain and cold. And I’m not making any excuses, but hopefully, that got our attention, and it makes us better as we prepare for one of the best teams in football in another cold, nasty place.”
Four hard-fought games in a row, a long East Coast trip, early start time, and inclement weather in a hostile environment may sound like little things to those not playing in the game, but they are real factors that affect the outcomes of games. You can add that the Jets have been playing outstanding of late, and this game had some bad juju for the Raiders.
If this was a problem for the Raiders, it will only get worse next week when all these same factors will come into play and probably a lot worse.
It’s the annual trip to Arrowhead. Derek Carr’s personal house of horrors. The place he has never won and had some of the worst games of his career. Where the crowd gets really loud. And where it gets really cold in December.
Playing in frigid temperatures and bad weather is something learned through experience. It isn’t something Raiders coaching can teach.
“I’m not a genius. I’m not Thomas Edison. I don’t know how to do that,” Gruden said of preparing his team for playing in bad weather. “You know, we just gotta show pictures of people that are cold that deal with cold (laughs) I don’t know. We’re not going to overanalyze it, we did not play our best football, and as I said yesterday, we’re really excited about this team, these guys that we have. And I said some things to them after the game I think they all bought into and agree with.”
Oh, and the Chiefs are coming off a bye. So, fatigue certainly won’t be a factor for them.
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