Here are some observations on the Raiders offense versus the Miami Dolphins. I was not able to watch this game live due to a family emergency and I mostly watched the All-22 coaches film, which does not have the CBS announcer audio-track. Therefore, I do not know what the announcers focused on during the broadcast or where I may disagree with what they said.
I also did not read any of the other writers’ tweets from during the game. Here are my views, unbiased by any other source:
-QB Derek Carr still looks like a franchise QB in the making but this was a bad game for him. This is due, in large part, to not having wide receivers on whom he can depend. He also seems to be out of sync with many of those receivers, especially TE Mychal Rivera. More on that in a moment.
Two receivers with whom he did seem more in sync were James Jones and new-comer Vincent Brown – In his a-little-over-a-half in the game, Carr targeted James Jones & Vincent Brown 9 times and completed 8 passes to the duo, going 8 of 9 for 80 yards (For Jones, it was 5 of 5 for 54 yards, for Brown it was 3 of 4 for 26 yards).
The sole incompletion between those two was the interception Carr threw and Brown was the target on that play. It was a poor throw by Carr and Brown didn’t have much of a chance on it.
Compare those stats to Andre Holmes, who was targeted 5 times by Carr, but only came down with 2 catches for 26 yards. Holmes was incredibly inconsistent in the game. He was targeted a team-high 12 times but only came down with 5 of those passes.
Holmes and QB Matt McGloin hooked up a few times after McGloin came in in relief of the injured Carr. Still, McGloin only connected on 3 of the 7 passes he threw Holmes’ way, less than 50%.
Holmes was also responsible for an interception when a well-thrown McGloin pass clanked off his hands and bounced into the hands of a Miami safety.
Carr continues to have problems with blitzes and, in fact, his interception was on a big blitz by Miami. The Dolphins blitzed 7 players and Carr threw up a very poor ball towards Vincent Brown, only to see it go almost right to the cornerback for a large return – almost a pick 6.
Carr will continue to be blitzed by opposing teams unless and until he shows that he can exploit the thin secondary on big blitzes. The best quarterbacks want teams to blitz them because they know that means they have good one on one matchups down the field. Carr is at his best when the defense rushes only 3 and he has more time to read the field.
This is not unexpected from a rookie quarterback. The Raiders hope the game will start to slow for Carr, soon, so that he can read and react to big blitzes faster and better.
-It seems that TE Mychal Rivera is also out of sync with Carr. In a previous After Review column, I mentioned a situation in which, had had been of one mind with Carr, Rivera would have peeled off of his route into the flat and run up field. As it was, Carr had to motion for him to do this, which tipped off the defense, too, and they were able to deflect the pass when Rivera moved up field.
Week 4 brought us another example of the two being on different pages. With 33 seconds left in the 2nd quarter, the Raiders faced a 3rd & 8 at their own 37 yard line. Rivera ran up the seam and then turned abruptly and stopped for a moment. He was wide open at this point.
Rivera ran what is known as a curl route, when he rounds his route and expects the ball as he turns. Essentially, Rivera ran a route like this:
It appears, however, that Carr thought that Rivera was going to or supposed to run a deep out route. That is, he didn’t expect Rivera to stop after turning, but to continue to go towards the sideline, like this:
Carr threw the ball where he anticipated Rivera to be. You can see, here, that Carr is throwing the ball in anticipation, with Rivera still in his break and not yet completing his turn. Had Rivera continued on an out route, he would still have been wide open and the ball would have been perfectly placed.
Instead, Rivera stopped for a moment and sat on the route and, when he saw the ball coming toward him, tried to move laterally and dive for the ball. Unfortunately, it was too late at this point – the ball was outside of his reach.
Had Rivera and Carr been on the same page, this would have been a completion for a first down and the Raiders could have tried to put up some points before the half. Instead, the Raiders punted and the Dolphins went into the half with a comfortable 24-7 lead.
-The team continues to not throw deep very often this year but it seems likely that Carr is a part of problem. Carr played more than half of the game and threw deep (over 20 yards from the line of scrimmage) only twice in that time.
McGloin, who played the remainder of the game after coming in with a little over five minutes remaining in the 3rd quarter, threw deep three times in his limited reps. I don’t have the data, but I from my perspective it also looked like McGloin threw over 10 yards much more consistently than Carr, who seems to prefer a lot of short crossing routes, screens, and targeting running backs out of the backfield.
In some ways, this should be expected – after all, Carr’s last two years in college came from a system in which he was asked to target players in short routes and ask them to make a play. It would make sense that Carr would look for these short routes first at this point in his NFL career, too – it’s what his mind has been trained to look for.
Unfortunately, the Raiders do not have receivers as explosive as Carr had at Fresno State and his short passes are not moving the team well enough down the field. This is part of why the Raiders have not been able to sustain drives.
McGloin, for comparison, was more than willing to toss up passes to his receivers and let them try to make a play on the ball – especially with Andre Holmes. That resulted in some big plays but also in a number of missed passes as Holmes continued to be erratic.
McGloin targeted James Jones only once – a short pass on a crossing route that Jones was able to take down the field for a 33 yard game. McGloin did not target Vincent Brown at all.
-I have seen that offensive coordinator Greg Olson got some flak, on Twitter at least, for giving FB Jamize Olawale his first carry of the season on a crucial 3rd& 1 late in the first quarter, when Oakland was still in the game. After watching the video of it from a few angles, I disagree that it was a bad call – in fact, I rather liked the play call (more on that in a moment).
The play call was definitely not the problem in this particular instance. Rather, the blocking was poor – specifically rookie LG Gabe Jackson was not able to block his man off.
Here is a screen capture of the play:
Notice that Jackson is losing the leverage battle versus the Miami defensive tackle. That DT is easily able to shed Jackson’s attempt to block, here, and penetrates the A gap to make the tackle on Olawale for no gain.
Had the Raiders been able to convert this down and keep this drive alive, perhaps the result of the game would have been different. We will never know. What do know is that Jackson was not able to win his battle, up front, and that did gave people a lot of rage – much of which was directed at the play call, instead of where it should have gone.
Why am I a fan of this play? Many times – especially if, like the Raiders, a team does not have an abundance of talent – the way to beat an opponent is to do something that the opponent does not expect. One of the best ways to do this is to give the ball to players who don’t typically touch the ball – think Houston throwing to JJ Watt for a TD versus Oakland in week 2.
This is why, for example, tight end Brian Leonhardt has caught 100% of the passes thrown his way. Because he’s only been thrown to 3 times! Teams do not account for him very much because he’s not typically a weapon the team uses. Instead, he’s a defensive afterthought and so he’s more open, frequently.
In fact, Leonhardt was on the receiving end of the game’s first TD – a 3 yard throw from Carr on the first offensive series. This score means that Leonhardt has one more touchdown than does Mychal Rivera, who currently has not scored this year – how many people thought that would happen?
So, giving the ball to Olawale was not a problem – it was a good idea! It was simply executed poorly.
-The Raiders run game continues to be terrible and this will need to be an area in which Tony Sparano invests a lot of time and energy.
Darren McFadden looks old and slow. Unfortunately, he still looks better than Maurice Jones-Drew, who looks older and slower. At this point, I see no reason to keep Latavius Murray on the sidelines unless they are convinced he doesn’t have what it takes. I don’t see how they could be convinced of that with only 4 carries to his name – two of which were when the Raiders were trying to get 1 yard versus the Patriots and the offensive line blocked poorly for both.
Murray has looked explosive and has shown decent vision on kickoff returns for the team, so far. I think he deserves more of a chance than he’s had, so far. He should be able to beat the 3.4 yard per carry average that McFadden has and he’s already beating Maurice Jones-Drew’s extremely poor 1.1 yard per carry average.
-Without a run game, the Raiders are struggling to do any kind of play action successfully. Instead, Olson is trying to create a threat of a run with package substitutions. For example, versus Miami, he would run out of a jumbo package – with OT Menelik Watson in as a blocking tight end – and then turn around and throw it from that same formation the next play. He couldn’t get the running game going too well, but at least the formation made the defense think a run was more likely.
Watson wasn’t able to sub in as a tight end for much of the game, of course, because he had to come in and play right tackle after Khalif Barnes went out with an injury. Barnes is not an ideal right tackle but he’s played the position solidly so far this season.
Watson was very poor at right tackle, showing bad technique and getting consistently beat. He struggled to show any kind of fundamentals and Carr started getting hit more and more from his right side as Watson didn’t have good footwork and bent at the waist far too much to get any kind of leverage on the defenders he faced.
Even when Barnes was in the game and the play action was working as well as it could be given the poor running game, there still were issues. For example, the picture below comes from the first sack of Carr in the game. Notice that MJD goes on the wrong side of Carr to receive the hand-off.
Not only is that a difficult way to fool the defense into thinking it’s a run, but Jones-Drew was also on the wrong side of the quarterback to block the free rusher coming in and that was the player that was able to take down Carr with very little effort. It was a very poor play.
-Tony Sparano inherits a mess of a team but not one without talent. His job as head coach will be to inspire the team to focus and perform better. He is a much more aggressive personality than is Dennis Allen and that may work in his favor in this case – the team needs some fire put under them to perform to the level that they must.
The Raiders are off this week and will return in week 6 to play the surging San Diego chargers at home.
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