Brand New Defense, Same Old Offense

By MikeBullock  |   Wednesday, August 18, 2010  |  Comments( 0 )

Oakland Raiders
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Normally, if you have a new, heralded, young offensive coordinator, an exciting new quarterback and a starting tailback who shattered records in college you just need to hope the defense can do their job so the offense can win and win big.

Well, Oakland’s offense lived the “bend but don’t break” mantra last weekend when they allowed Dallas to move into the red zone four times, yet never gave up a touchdown. The Cowboys instead settled for three field goals and one turnover on downs.

Contrary to what you might think based on the promise of the offense, if it weren’t for the final five minutes in the fourth quarter, those nine points would have been all the scoring this game produced.

While the Oakland offense kept a nice balance, achieving 18 first downs, equally distributed between run and pass plays, their third down efficiency was an abysmal 16%. Raider quarterbacks once again failed to throw for more than 200 yards, but the Raider run game did gobble up 129, though none of the running backs struck pay dirt. One of the lone bright spots was the pass protection, which only allowed one sack.

While wisdom dictates the offense remain as vanilla as possible during the preseason, the ability to execute the fundamentals of blocking, route running, precise passing and the like don’t change, whether your offense is vanilla or rocky road.

If Hue Jackson wanted game film of his new unit to dissect, odds are he hasn’t slept since Saturday.

On the other side of the ball, things were far more positive. Oakland’s D held the ‘Boys to only 13 first downs and an equally abysmal 18% third down efficiency. They also stopped Dallas in their tracks on the ground, limiting a promising backfield to only 66 yards while keeping the air attack under 200 as well. Additionally, Oakland planted Cowboy quarterbacks six times for 34 negative yards, four of which came in a 20 play span and one that almost produced a safety. Additionally, three of the ‘Boys running plays ended in their own backfield.

The defensive play of the game came at the hands of safety Jerome Boyd who took a tipped pass 48-yards to secure the first Raider pick six of the preseason.

The common chant is “it’s just the preseason, it doesn’t really matter”. Unfortunately, that’s a myth based on a misunderstanding of football. Fundamentals always matter whether it’s a Pop Warner scrimmage or the Super Bowl or anywhere in between. While the Oakland defense seems to have vastly improved in that area, the offense still looks like a unit destined for the eight straight double digit loss season. If Jackson and Cable want to end that streak, they need to start by improving the blocking schemes, providing better game plans and calling better plays. And, in the meantime, the offense as a whole needs to focus on committing themselves to an excellence in execution, something Oakland used to live by but now seems to have forgotten.
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