The Las Vegas Raiders showed some real grit in Week 1 against the Denver Broncos as they managed to overcome a halftime deficit to come back and win 17-16.
The Raiders looked great in the first half as they were able to move the ball downfield effectively. Davante Adams showed off some great chemistry in his first game with Jimmy Garoppolo, while Jakobi Meyers made an impact with his first touchdown with the team.
However, the Broncos were able to respond with a couple of scores of their own and looked in control for most of the second half. Las Vegas did well to answer in the fourth quarter as Garoppolo found Meyers for his second touchdown of the day which ultimately was enough to give them the win.
Fans will be happy about the win, but in his postgame interview Adams expressed he would like to see the Raiders play cleaner football via Vegas Sports Today as transcribed by Sean Deveney of Heavy.com:
“We definitely made it tough on ourselves with some of the penalties, didn’t come out and play as clean as we would have liked to, especially playing against a good football team,” Adams said. “As we go into next week and we obviously got another good football team that we’re going against [in Buffalo] so we gotta be smarter and finish it out. In the end, we finished it out and that was the difference today.”
Las Vegas committed 10 penalties that cost them 97 yards and were fortunate that Denver was unable to capitalize. Most of them came on the defensive end, though to Adams’ point, there were a couple that happened in the end zone that prevented them from scoring.
The game wasn’t pretty by any stretch, but at an early point of the season, the Raiders should feel good that they came away with a victory and started the year off on the right foot. As Adams noted, though, a date with the Buffalo Bills in Week 2 represents an entirely different challenge, and they’ll have to be much more disciplined on both sides of the field if they want to keep the momentum going.
Josh Jacobs was feeling ‘fresher’ heading into Denver
Josh Jacobs didn’t look like a player who had held out for most of the offseason as the running back assumed his workhorse role against the Broncos. Jacobs carried the ball 19 times 48 yards while hauling in two receptions for 23 yards.
While Jacobs probably is still working himself into peak conditioning, he said he felt fresher going into the matchup against Denver.
