If the Las Vegas Raiders are truly destined to be the six-win team that everyone who covers the NFL thinks they will be, the first half of Sunday's Week 1 game against the Chargers was a wonderful start.
For fans who want to see the team actually do well, it was a brutal way to spend a Sunday.
Things were borderline disastrous for the Raiders basically from the opening kickoff, and, if you can believe it, a Gardner Minshew led offense took a little time to get going. It's obviously still early in the season, but the team isn't doing much to challenge the idea that the Chiefs may still end up winning the AFC West this year.
It hasn't been for lack of opportunities, though.
In the first half alone, the Raiders drives ended as follows: punt, turnover on downs, touchdown, punt, punt, fumble, end of half. It's like if The University of Iowa was in the middle of the desert and full of degenerate gamblers. The NFL's parity is one of it's biggest advantages over other sports, but sometimes even that isn't powerful enough to outlast the Las Vegas Raiders. But surely something will change over the next 16 weeks!
A closer look at said drives from the Raiders' first half is somehow even more depressing than first glance.
First drive? A nine-yard completion to start, followed by three straight plays that failed to gain one (1) yard. The next drive, a turnover on downs, featured Zamir White's third failed attempt of the game to gain one yard for a first down. To make matters for White, Alexander Mattison's touchdown on the Raiders' third drive of the game probably solidified next week's depth chart. And if that didn't, his third quarter fumble definitely did.
Somewhere along the way, Gardner Minshew had his first True Minshew Moment of the season, and Daniel Carlson missed a field goal.
Maybe there's a team out there that can survive with a bad QB, an unreliable running game, and a shaky kicker, but I kinda doubt it. Most people would have told you that the Raiders were going to be bad this season, but they didn't have to go make every unforced error possible within the first 45 minutes of Week 1.
They are doing everything in their power to make sure they can choose whichever quarterback they want next April, and when you frame it like that, it doesn't necessarily feel so bad.
