Missed tackles were huge problem for Raiders in blowout loss to Bears

Missed tackles were huge problem for Raiders in blowout loss to Bears

Watching the Raiders get run through by the Bears offense looked pretty bad in real time. With the benefit of hindsight, it looks epically bad.

No stat encapsulates how poorly the Raiders defense played Sunday in Chicago quite like missed tackles. There seemed like a lot and hoo buddy were there a lot.

Missing tackles is tied pretty closely to wins and losses here. They won the previous two games thanks to the play of the defense and missing an average of four tackles per game. Then they put up more than three times that in one game and get destroyed. That’s no coincidence.

“I don’t think we tackled well and it’s not a mystery,” McDaniels said Monday morning. “Gave up too many yards after we had an opportunity to contact the runner. So, we’re going to need to work on that and try to shore that up.”

Before going back through the game tape, I can’t say exactly which players had those missed tackles, but Marcus Peters leading the way in that category is not the least bit surprising. There were a couple of glaringly obvious ones in the game.

On the drive following the first Hoyer interception, Peters was in position to make the stop on a short pass out right. But…no.

That play went for six yards on third and short to give the Bears a first down at the 19-yard-line and they punched it in three plays later.

And that wasn’t even the missed tackle on the D’Onta Foreman TD catch here.

I don’t want to pile on Peters too much here. After all, there’s still nine other missed tackles by Raiders defenders not named Peters. And much of the 177 rushing yards the Bears put up was the result of those missed tackles.

Foreman alone had 120 yards from scrimmage and three touchdowns.