Week 1 Broncos @Raiders

[draft jedi]

After watching the 1st half I have one thing to say FIRE ROB RYAN!

The last time I saw a defender run so ragged by a youngster was Mal Sterland trying to mark Lee Sharp. Hall is being made to look stupid by Eddie Royal. Second td down to hall giving away 30 yards in penalties. Due to cheap shots on Royal.
We have less of a pass rush than last year. No one has come near to sacking Cutler the only sack so far is due to a Bootleg by Cutler, nice hit by Aso. C utler has had all day to pass.
Our Run defence looks better, but not by much.
On offence our line is still a liability, no surprice. Russell given no time. Running game good but getting predicable.

[PompeyRaider]

Pretty pathetic all round.

If it carries on anything like this Kiffin won't be around long.  He will have a blow out with David. "Well I did tell you to fire Ryan, I wanted to draft some lineman".

Week 1 and the season looks like it's going down the toilet.

[psj3809]

Hmm dont know what to think !

Before every new season i think 'what if....' and think we'll do a 'Kurt Warner' where he came from nowhere to stun the league in 1999 or we'll have the next great rookie sensation but so often lately we just look terrible.

The offense was one dimensional, granted Russell is young but let him throw it a few times instead of run/run/run.  The defense was sooo poor, Cutler had 200 yards by halftime and was on pace for obviously 400+, Eddie Royal (Who ?) looked a sensation.  No pass rush, LB's all over the place, the defense was shocking.

Offense looked alright once we started throwing it more but granted we were down by 80 points and the Broncos were in prevent.  But we need a more balanced attack.  Higgins did his usual, one minute a great return then some terrible ones.

Russell was a bit way off on some of his passes, one or two bombs were very close and i'm sure that'll get sorted.  I'm glad he didnt have a 28a, 9c, 97 yards , 2 ints type Alex Smith performance but again most of his yards were in mop up time.

Really gutted, SOOOO glad i didnt stay up for that. Shocked to see 'Fire Kiffin' signs as i thought only Al would be holding those

I'm hopeful against KC (Specially as theyre starting Huard) but talk about disappointed.  Just badlyyyy want to get back to winning ways so i dont hear the 'its all Al's fault' stuff time and time again.  Kiffin should do a far better job, the players who are getting paid millions should do far better (Thought DeAngelo Hall was terrible).

The only 'bright' moment was the opening seconds where once again youre sat there, biting your nails, happy to see your team live and very stressed on every single play until you realise its more of the same.

Last year the defense kept us in many games when the offense struggled, this year so far the defense was shocking.  I blame Rob Ryan and the defense who were awful for this loss BUT i wish Kiffin had tried to open it up more with Russell.  Granted hes 'essentially a rookie' but either way hes not going to learn from handing off for the whole of the first half, hes gonna have his lumps but let him, he'll get through them and learn from it.

Agree a lot with this report though..

Raiders simply leave you shaking your head | PressDemocrat.com | The Press Democrat | Santa Rosa, CA

I do wish they let Russell throw the ball instead of 'molly codling' him

[Gazzara]

I was absolutely disgusted watching the game last night.  I just couldn't stand the pain anymore after Q3 so just hid in a corner praying for someone to rip my Raiders tattoo from me.  I have always been a staunch, Al needs to take a back seat but now I am getting the feeling this is all down to the coaching nd they need to go.  They all looked as though they had the "I've just fucked the neighbours dog look" look on their face and did not have a clue what to do.

The lack of control truely showed over the players after Hall's back to back penalties where he was explaining/shouting at a coach!!!  It was either Ryan or Kiffin standing there just listening and letting them get whatever it was they needed to get out.  A decent coach would have been tearing the fucker a new arsehole.  Total lack of discipline that stems from the coaching staff.

I will side with Hall on one thing though and this is not an excuse at all.  They hardly threw towards Asomugha and concentrated on the Hal/Royal one on one match up.  You really would have thought that Cable would have adjusted for this and given him more back up.

O-Line??  Hate to say I told you so but I did and i seem to be right on this one.  Curry was a bit of a shocker too with a few dropped passes that really should have been caught.  JR was hounded all day long as pocket after pocket collapses and all options covered.

D-line there was no penetration at all and Cutler could have danced the Fandango behind the protection he got.

I am going to stick my head out here and honestly say, apart from one rookie mistake, where he should have thrown the ball away on a bobble end around our top players were Fargas and Lee Higgins.  These seemed to be the only 2 in my eyes that actually done something where you stood up and showed a bit of heart.

I say sack the coaching staff including Kiffin and start rebuilding from there very quickly as the problems all start from there.

[psj3809]

Well i want to give Kiffin a few more weeks yet, yeah it was a nightmare week, but if anything perhaps Kiffin was right when he wanted Ryan gone ?

I'm standing up for Al, he pays a fortune for new players, Kiffin then moans he cant sign any 'fringe' type players to compete, i mean Al cant sign everyone !

The D-line was terrible though, our LB's i thought did a poor job and our so called great secondary was very very poor allowing so many big plays.

But like you say DeAngelo Hall should have been benched late in the game for his penalties, i'm sure he'll come good a week or two later but after something like that he needs to be taken off.

It was very painful to watch but it was nice to see Russell get some confidence later in the game (Granted it was all over by then), Chad Schillens i thought did well with two decent grabs, weird seeing #81 out there though !

Considering the money we have invested in Tommy Kelly (And Terdell Sands) its criminal we allow so many rushing yards.

If Kiffin isnt doing a good job by the bye week i think there'll be a change at HC.

[Aeyjay]

UURRRGGGHHH!!!!!!

 God that was depressing, The D was as bad as it could have been. Denver have given the league the blueprint to beating us. Victimise Hall and Brown and we can't score enough to keep up.

zero pressure plus poor coverage equals disaster .

last year we made rb's look like hall of famers this year we do the same for qb's and wr's!

I repeat UURRRGGGHHH!!!!!

[psj3809]

As for Week 2 we need Russell to throw a fair few more times in the first half.  If you look at the stats Fargas/McFadden did a decent job at RB, granted a fair chunk was in mop-up time etc but thats obviously our strength.

Lelie surprised me with a touchdown and Schillens did alright, gutted Javon Walker wasnt playing (Hes sooo on his way to bust-ville).  I think offensively we could be alright this year, Russell is learning every game and he'll get better and better, granted Kiffin has kept him under wraps a lot but if you look at his stats for his two starts (SD last year and Denver) hes done well.  But i still think Kiffin has to let him open up more.

As for defense Shanahan is a great coach i hate to say and has a brilliant gameplan, we were just embarassed.  Our so called strength - LB's did a poor job, our secondary with DeAngelo Hall was shocking.  Aso got caught a few times but Hall was having a nightmare. 

The d-line were very very poor, no pass rush whatsoever.

Against KC it'll be tough as its their home opener, KC will try to run all over us, i have hope in this game but if we lose to KC then at 0-2 its practically season over to two divisional rivals and a poor looking Raiders team.

Gutted, you wait 9 months for this and then this disaster.  I look back to some past openers though, back in 1994 was it when Jerry Rice burned us on MNF and we lost something like 48-21 or something similar and bounced back that season to win a fair few games.

How the Raiders bounce back from this game will tell us all we need to know for the rest of the year

[Aeyjay]

Yeah I'm f*cked off but we can recover to respectability still. We weren't superbowl bound anyway. We need to radically address our defensive philosphy but our O had signs of life and showed what we all knew we can't play from two scores down.

[Gazzara]

I agree in principle.  I thought as an offensive unit the rookies shone and justified their positions.  The defence let us down big time so instead of being able to ease JR into opening up the pass game it was catch up all the way which took us out of our gameplan.

The beauty of it is, if there is one, is that KC and SD went down to losses also and with Denver the only team in our division will keep us in with a shout.  KC is a huge game though and if we leak holes like last night we are pretty much dead in the water and we better start deciding who our first round pick should be next year.

[psj3809]

Yep the KC game really is huge.  Whoever loses that even at 0-2 i would say is dead in the water.  Losing to their hated rivals, dropping to 0-2, its HUGE for us.

The 'only' positive is that surely Kiffin will really fire them up this week and we should see a totally different team.  (I hope).

But the first half of the Denver game, reminded me of when San Diego crushed us at home in 2006 under Art Shell in Week 1.  Just totally flat all over.

With under 5 minutes left to play in the first half we had 9 yards passing

[R8RMR]

I don't think that anything that I can say hasn't already been said. But we should still wait and see if they are capable of making any improvements from last night before condemning them all outright.

[psj3809]

Agree with that, must admit i've posted a lot due to utter frustration and feeling let down, wait 9 months for this and then its dire.

BUT thats one thing about being a fan, i still had the butterflies and excitement before the game just as it was starting.  Then later its a feeling of 'oh not again'.

Yeah it may be a while (still) but when we turn things around (and see the fans coming back over !) then you really start to appreciate winning when you go through dark times such as this.  We wll be back !