In the NFL, any team can beat any team on ‘any given Sunday.’ The Raiders may be 6-4 and the Atlanta Falcons may be 3-7, but they’re still an NFL team with elite players. This is what we call a trap game.
“It’s very dangerous,” said offensive coordinator Greg Olson. “This isn’t college football. This is the National Football League. If you don’t prepare each week, you will be embarrassed. We try to obviously guard against that as coaches. And I think the more mature team you have, the more veteran players you have, the more you avoid those pitfalls of the trap games. I think we have a mature team. They’ve prepared well this week with the short schedule. We wouldn’t expect anything less from them. Certainly, every team in the National Football League can beat any other team on any given Sunday. Hopefully, our players are mature enough to understand that.”
Wednesday, Jon Gruden said the Falcons are “the best 3-7 team I’ve ever seen.” While that may be a slight overstatement, the Falcons have played much better of late, since Raheem Morris took over as head coach.
The team was 0-5 when they fired Dan Quinn. Since then they’re 3-2 under Morris, with wins over the Vikings, Panthers, and Broncos. Their losses were to the 8-2 Saints last week and a one-point loss to the Lions.
The one area that has improved tremendously since Morris took over is the defense. With five games before and five games since, it’s easy to compare directly. They allowed over 32 points per game in the first five and over 22 points per game in the last five. That’s a ten-points per game shift.
Merely referring to any game for the Raiders a ‘trap game’ suggests they are talented enough now that they should beat the teams with significantly worse records. But simply showing up as a better team isn’t enough. They play the games for a reason.
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