All week the Raiders were trying to downplay Derek Carr facing his former head coach Jack Del Rio who is now the defensive coordinator in Washington. In the end, there was a lot to that storyline. And Del Rio dominated it.
The Raiders didn’t score until the final seconds of the first half and scored just three points in the first three quarters. They ended up losing 17-15 to the Washington Football team.
“I thought early [Derek Carr] was under duress trying to get the ball down the field,” said interim head coach Rich Bisaccia. “I thought that we had one that we missed early in the game on a route for us when we had DeSean [Jackson] down there. Looks like we just missed it, we ended up checking the ball down. Certainly is a problem in the first half, we couldn’t really get ourselves in a rhythm. Didn’t really have enough drives to do anything with the ball. When we did get it, we ended up in three-and-out situations. It wasn’t a very good first half for us. We ended up doing a good job at the end coming out with some points to end the half. Certainly wasn’t what we expected going in.”
Losing a defensive battle is exactly how Del Rio hoped this one would go. But with the Raiders having ten days to prepare and with Del Rio missing his best edge rusher Chase Young, the Raiders would seem to have the advantage. You’d have thought.
The loss drops the Raiders to 6-6 on the season. So, it’s somewhat appropriate that the loss came against the man who was their head coach for their one winning season in the past 19 years. That was 2016. The Raiders would go 6-10 the following year and Del Rio would be fired after the final game of the season because Jon Gruden convinced Mark Davis he was the answer to their issues on offense.
Four years in, it’s pretty obvious the issues went well beyond coaching and the Raiders have not reached the same success in the post Del Rio era. As this stat speaks to.
#Raiders are 22-15 with Derek Carr at QB when allowing 20 points or fewer. The .595 win % in those games is worst of 47 QBs w/ more than 10 starts when team allowed 20 or fewer since 2014. Rest of NFL has .791 win % in those scenarios
— Josh Dubow (@JoshDubowAP) December 6, 2021
That’s not to say Del Rio was the answer or that keeping him as head coach would have drastically changed their fate the past few years.
In 2020 Del Rio resurfaced to take the DC job in DC. Where he no doubt circled the reunion with DC (Derek Carr) and the Raiders. And that reunion just went better than he could’ve imagined.