Reserve tackle Thayer Munford split out wide and ran a short passing route with the Raiders presumably using the unconventional tactic in an attempt to confuse the Kansas City Chiefs late in their game Sunday afternoon.
Instead, the move only baffled the subset of 62,533 fans in attendance at Allegiant Stadium who were paying close enough attention to the intricacies of the Raiders’ offensive formations. The Chiefs were unaffected, especially considering Munford’s wide-receiver act turned out to be a diversion for … a Gardner Minshew quarterback draw.
The play didn’t work, as Kansas City nose tackle Mike Pennel met the Raiders’ quarterback at the line of scrimmage and forced a fumble that teammate Drue Tranquill recovered.
Taking over in Raiders’ territory midway through the fourth quarter, the Chiefs scored three minutes later on a pass from quarterback Patrick Mahomes to rookie receiver Xavier Worthy.
The touchdown put them up two scores with five minutes to play and all but clinched an eventual 27-20 victory. That made Minshew’s lone turnover of the day — but his 11th of the season — a turning point of the game, and one with a quite bizarre footnote given the play setup.
“I’m not going to get into playcalling or anything of that nature,” Raiders coach Antonio Pierce said in his postgame news conference. “I’m sure there are questions about what I did but I’ll tell you one thing our team did: We were competitive. We fought until the very end to give ourselves a chance.”
The Raiders’ overall performance against the Chiefs might have marked their best effort throughout a current four-game losing streak, but it also further illustrated that they’re not talented enough to overcome coaching gaffes and mismanagement.
That’s exactly what they’ve been tasked to do with Pierce struggling in his first year as a full-time head coach and offensive coordinator Luke Getsy not making his transition any easier.
Getsy scripted a brilliant opening as the Raiders answered a 70-yard touchdown drive by the Chiefs, with Kareem Hunt punching in the score from a 1-yard line, with one of their own.
Minshew was on point and top receiver Jakobi Meyers, who missed the last two games with an ankle injury, had a welcomed return with a seven-yard touchdown catch. Record-breaking rookie tight end Brock Bowers also had a key third-down catch.
Then, as they’ve done several times throughout what now feels like a lost season with a 2-6 record, the Raiders started to drift away from what was working. Getsy started to call plays that fit better with Pierce’s desire for a physical, ball-control offense.
They didn’t work.
Las Vegas totaled 21 carries for 33 rushing yards against the Chiefs with the problems on the ground immediately apparent.
And yet, when safety Tre’von Moehrig intercepted a Mahomes pass deflected by defensive tackle John Jenkins and returned it to the 3-yard line with the Raiders trailing 17-13 in the third quarter, the Raiders called three straight running plays.
Running back Alexander Mattison got two yards on first down but was stuffed in the backfield on the next two plays.
“We have to do better in execution,” said Mattison, who had 14 carries for 15 yards. “We have to do better schematically, however you look at it.”
On fourth-and-goal back at the 3-yard line, Chiefs’ defensive linemen Tershawn Wharton and edge rusher George Karlaftis caved the Raiders’ offensive line to sack Minshew.
“You’ve got to punch it in,” Pierce said. “Last week, we had the same opportunity and we threw it four straight times, so we were trying to get it and just got knocked back. They won the line of scrimmage on those plays.”
Actually, at the goal line at the end of last week’s loss at the Rams, the Raiders may have planned to throw it four straight times but Pierce changed course after a false-start penalty.
He sent out the field-goal unit to cut an eight-point lead to a five-point with less than three minutes to play. It might have been his strangest decision since a late-game Week 1 punt at the opponents’ 43-yard line that inhibited the Raiders’ chances of beating the Chargers.
There was no singular win-crushing decision against the Chiefs, but a series of them that conspired to handicap the Raiders.
In the first half, Pierce used a timeout directly after the two-minute warning with the Chiefs lined up for a third-and-goal play from the five-yard line. Kansas City scored anyway, with Mahomes zipping a strike in between linebackers Divine Deablo and Robert Spillane to tight end Travis Kelce.
That put the Chiefs up 14-10, but Pierce’s primary objective upon getting the ball back wasn’t to try to add points before halftime.
“We wanted to score but more importantly, we wanted to keep the clock running,” Pierce explained. “It was 1:57 or so, something like that. Going against a really good team in a 2-minute situation, you want to get a first down, allow them to use their timeouts and give Patrick Mahomes the least amount of time possible.”
The ultra-conservative approach, which included an Ameer Abdullah run that went nowhere on 2nd-10, backfired. Kansas City got the ball back with 1:20 to play and drove 56 yards to set up the first of two Harrison Butker field goals on the day.
“I feel comfortable with the plays that we’re calling,” Minshew said. “I think in a lot of cases we’ve got to execute better. They make good calls too. I think there’s spots all across the board that we can get better at.”
Pierce showed an even more glaring lack of regard for his timeouts in the second half. He used three straight after Minshew’s fumble and before Worthy’s touchdown with more than five minutes still left to play.
“We were just looking at the score, looking at all the numbers,” Pierce explained. “If they kick a field goal, it’s a two-score game. We were trying to save as much time as possible.”
But no numbers justify the increasingly poor strategic decisions that have hurt the Raiders’ chances at wins on a weekly basis.
With the offense opened up and the Chiefs playing back while nursing a 13-point lead late, Minshew led a 13-play, 70-yard scoring drive capped with an 11-yard touchdown pass to DJ Turner with 2:07 remaining in the game.
But the Raiders failed to recover the ensuing onside kick and then, with no timeouts left, had no recourse to stop the clock and prevent Mahomes from kneeling for victory.
“Everybody played as hard as they possibly could,” Meyers said. “We all went out there and laid it out on the line so I’m straight. I’m proud of the guys for going out there and playing the way that they did.”
Pierce called out his team for making “business decisions” and not playing as hard as they could in a loss to the Panthers earlier this year. The players could have just easily turned it around on the coaching staff and grumbled about several calls made throughout this losing streak, but that hasn’t happened.
The Minshew draw, Munford-as-a-receiver play would have likely turned more heads if a different team tried something similar. But the Raiders committed so many more flagrant errors that it was barely a passing curiosity postgame.
The overall message from the Raiders was that they don’t feel out of it yet; they still want to win and avoid making the future the focus of the rest of the season. The players are going to need the coaches to put them in better positions to succeed starting with next week’s game at Cincinnati to live up to that goal.
“It takes all of us,” edge rusher Maxx Crosby said. “We’ve just got to keep working.”
