By Art Spander
OAKLAND — This is what happens to teams that aren’t quite there, teams that show progress but often don’t show results, teams that are difficult to embrace but even more difficult to criticize.
You want terrible? Look at the Detroit Lions, getting booed at home, benching first-rounders for bench-warmers. The Lions are terrible and readily identified as much. In contrast to the Oakland Raiders, who as young teams with new coaches do so frequently, entice and tease and then trip over themselves. Clunk.
Not many boo. Instead, they gasp.
The Raiders on Sunday played arguably their best defensive game in years. They controlled the ball — having it for 34 minutes of the 60. For the most part they controlled the great Peyton Manning, who threw two interceptions and no touchdowns passes for a mediocre passer rating of 62.3, compared to the appreciably better rating of 82.1 by Raiders second-year quarterback Derek Carr.
But as we’ve been told forever and a day, the only number that matters is the final score. The rest is eyewash, material for talk shows and feature stories. At an O.Co Coliseum filled with passion and hope, the final score was Broncos 16, Raiders 10.
That’s the fewest points the Broncos scored this season. No less importantly, after two missed field goals, a lost fumble and a killer interception, a pass returned 74 yards in the fourth quarter when the Broncos were in front only 9-7, that’s the fewest the Raiders scored this season.
Yes, could have, perhaps should have. But didn’t.
The Raiders, with mistakes small and large, so encouraging and then, wham, so disappointing, are not yet capable. “They were supposed to win,” said Carr. “We expected to win.” But they were not yet ready to win.
Sebastian Janikowski set a team record for the number of games played as a Raider, 241. But he had one field goal blocked and another go wide from 40 yards. “Sometimes it happens,” said Seabass.
And Carr lost a fumbled snap on Oakland’s first play from scrimmage in the second half, and then on a misread — “We didn’t execute,” Carr said in a statement that indicted nobody — with the ball on Denver 31, Carr’s throw was picked by Cliff Harris Jr. and returned 74 yards for a TD.
“I always take full accountability,” said Carr, who in his words and actions seems more mature than someone in only his second year as a pro — but in his football occasionally plays exactly like someone in only his second year as a pro.
The game is one of overcoming errors. The best, the veterans, have their problems but not very many when matched against others. In Green Bay on Sunday, Aaron Rodgers even threw an interception. But it was his first in a home game in three years. The longer you go the fewer mistakes you make, and so, the longer you go.
Manning has gone longer than most. He’s 39, the same age as Raiders safety Charles Woodson, who after seasons of facing him finally had his first interception off Manning. But Peyton wasn’t unnerved. Upset, yes, but not unnerved. He’s in his 16th season. He learned long ago to soldier on. Learned how to win, or more directly learned how to enable his team to win.
Raiders coach Jack Del Rio knows about both losing and winning and, as the former Broncos defensive coordinator, knows all about Manning. Del Rio particularly coveted a victory over his former team yet understood why the Raiders couldn’t get it.
“I thought we gave ourselves a chance,” said Del Rio, which only sounds good. Oakland, after consecutive defeats, now is 2-3. The Broncos are 5-0, and that stat far outdoes Manning’s interceptions and lack of TD passes.
Woodson was asked in a game when the opposing offense, Denver, was held to three field goals — the touchdown, remember, was a pick six, or interception return — if he would expect a win.
“Yeah, I suppose,” he said, trying to be elusive. “Defensively, we came out. We felt like were prepared and could do some things against them. We were able to, limiting those guys, but we just weren’t able to do enough.”
That’s the inevitable summation from a team that falls short, a team that competes, that excites, that tempts and then, because for one reason or another, ends up losing.
A team like the Oakland Raiders.
