The Oakland Raiders have looked like a completely different team than the 2016 squad. This year’s iteration of the Raiders has dropped their past four games, with their most recent loss against a divisional rival in the Los Angeles Chargers.
With Oakland floundering, it is a wonder as to whether or not this team can dig itself out of this whole and still make the playoffs. The biggest issue for them during the 2017 NFL season has surprisingly been their offense, often failing to move the chains and get chunk yards.
According to Paul Gutierrez of ESPN, Donald Penn had no issue addressing the team’s struggles:
If I could pinpoint [the problem], we would have won that game out there today,” left tackle Donald Penn said. “We’re going to get it fixed. You know it’s just frustrating you’re that close and we didn’t pull it out. Last year we pulled out a lot of close games and this year, it ain’t going for us.”
Derek Carr did not look like himself in the game against the Chargers and it raises questions as to whether or not he should have come back from his back injury so soon. To Penn’s point, perhaps the losses are the Raiders regressing back to the mean when it comes to pulling out close wins.
The Raiders will need to figure out some solutions and quickly because they have a home tilt against the AFC West leaders, the Kansas City Chiefs. If they can not pull themselves together against another division rival, then they may have to kiss their Super Bowl dreams goodbye.
