The Oakland Raiders had one of the best offenses in football the first half of the season, which made up for a struggling defense.
In recent weeks though it has been the opposite, as the defense has improved tremendously which has made up for an offense that has been struggling.
While the offense has a whole has been able to move the ball down the field, it is in the red zone that they have struggled as they have not been able to get the ball in the end zone as easily as they were in the beginning of the season.
According to Josh Dubow of the Denver Post, offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave said that they are focused on getting their red zone offense back to what it once was:
“We’re ready to get back on track, that’s for sure,” offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave said Wednesday. “We want to come away with touchdowns when we get down there. It’s tough enough to get down there. We want to finish the right way. So, we’re working hard on that, count on being better moving forward. A couple uncharacteristic mistakes. We don’t want to just sweep them under the rug. We want to address them, get them fixed and get back on track.”
The Raiders scored touchdowns on 10 of their first 11 red zone opportunities to start the season. While no one expected them to keep that rate up, no one could have predicted their recent struggles.
They have scored touchdowns on just nine of their last 24 red zone opportunities, and in their last two games they were just 2-for-11.
Part of that has to do with a finger injury to quarterback Derek Carr, as he has worked exclusively out of the shotgun the past two weeks so the Raiders could not utilize their power running game the past two weeks.
Luckily for them though they have one of the best kickers in the league in Sebastian Janikowski. The 37-year-old was 4-for-4 last week against the San Diego Chargers and 2-for-2 the week before against the Kansas City Chiefs.
