Whether it’s a big win or a big loss, afterward the question becomes if what we saw was a sign of things to come or an anomaly. If you go based on what the Raiders have done in their first ten games, last Sunday’s loss to the Falcons was an outlier to be certain.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t a sign of things to come. The Falcons tapped into something no team had before them and thoroughly disrupted the Raiders offense.
So, now the question becomes if it was simply a bad matchup or if teams like the Jets, who are up this week, can use what happened to the Raiders in Atlanta as a blueprint for beating them. Offensive coordinator Greg Olson thinks that would be a mistake on the Jets’ part.
“We would say we’ve got an 11-game sample size for them to look at,” Olson said Thursday. “If they want to look at that one game and say here’s the key to beating the Raiders based on that game I think that would be incorrect and I don’t think most guys would go about it that way. But there’s certain things that Atlanta did that maybe they feel like in their mind exposed the Raiders offense. Well, we don’t see it that way. Every game’s different, every plan’s different. We like the plan this week and we’re looking forward to playing the game.”
Olson echoed the issue being that the Raiders simply turned the ball over too much. Five times to be exact. Which would suggest he sees the loss to the Falcons as self-inflicted wounds.
The problem with that is it dismisses what the Falcons were doing to force those turnovers and to force the Raiders into the position where they end up making a mistake. They got the Raiders off their game.
Sure, it’s possible it was simply a match-up issue and no other team can duplicate it. Olson and the Raiders are banking on that being the case. That their game plan for how to handle the Falcons was the problem and with a new week and a new opponent comes a clean slate.
“It’s our belief, we have a tremendous amount of belief in our players on offense,” Olson added. “And it wasn’t indicative of their performance thus far this season. We’re looking forward to playing this weekend and get a chance to see how our guys respond to adversity. Again, we feel like we’ve accumulated a lot of the right players, right character players and had a good week of practice. Just looking forward to getting back on the field to prove ourselves.”
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