When coach Jon Gruden returned to the Raiders, it was obvious the Las Vegas offense would be based on running the football, judging from the coach’s past — especially from his first stint as Raiders coach when he employed a bevy of backs.
Indeed, this vintage of Gruden’s Raiders leans heavily on the run game. The offensive guru simply believes in its power, and his gameplan needs a healthy rushing attack to succeed.
But while the 2020 squad held those standards early in the campaign, the offense has struggled in that department lately while losing at Atlanta and beating the winless Jets last weekend. The absence of dynamic running back Josh Jacobs and behemoth right tackle Trent Brown certainly had something to do with the paltry 14 rushing yards at halftime against the Jets, but the Raiders need production down the stretch, regardless of who plays.
“I haven’t been happy with [the run game] the last couple games. I know our guys haven’t either.,” Gruden told reporters on Wednesday. “We can be optimistic and we can be realistic, and I’m going to be realistic, we got to do a better job. We got to have better plans, we got to coach better. We got to do it better, and I’ll just leave it like that.
“We feed our families with our running game. We got to be able to run out the clock at the end of the game like we did in Arrowhead. We got to be able to convert in short-yardage and we didn’t do that in Atlanta and it still irritates all of us. So, we got to do better and we made the effort to get better today.”
It’s clear how important the rushing attack is to Gruden. It makes his life, and his family’s life, go ’round. He’s instilled that into his team, and apparently, they’re all irritated about the poor performances recently.
But Gruden says they worked on the rushing attack in practice, and on Wednesday, Brown was on the field with the team. He’s been out due to two stints on the reserver/COVID-19 list. Jacobs didn’t practice Wednesday due to an injured ankle, however, but that doesn’t mean he won’t play this week against the Colts. He played on occasion last year without practicing at all. He started the Atlanta game but ran like his body needed a rest.
The Raiders could use them both against the Colts, who are the fourth-best defense in rush yards per attempt, allowing just 3.8 yards per try. With Las Vegas trailing Indianapolis by one game in the AFC playoff hunt, Gruden’s tactics and personnel will face a mighty test this week, and regardless of who’s on the field, expect him to stay to true his bread and butter, the run game.
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