Is the Raiders $100 Million Experiment Working?
By Darragh Holland
Following Thursday night’s loss to the Los Angeles Chargers, the Las Vegas Raiders playoff hopes look all but dashed.
This was a crushing defeat for the Raiders against a Chargers team that lost 45-0 just two weeks ago to the New England Patriots.
The Raiders now need to beat the Miami Dolphins and the Denver Broncos to finish 9-7 and hope for a miracle run of results to go their way.
Even the 8-5 Baltimore Ravens are currently out of the playoffs as things stand so it’s hard to imagine a 9-7 record gets a team in.
And to finish out the season, the Baltimore Ravens are playing the Jacksonville Jaguars, New York Giants and the Cincinnati Bengals so it’s very possible that they win out and end up at 11-5.
This is now Gruden's third season and the belief could well be that the Raiders have improved, at least a little bit.
Justin Herberts QB sneak in overtime allowed the Chargers to overcome the Raiders. (USA TODAY Sports)
For a long time the Raiders were the laughing stock of the NFL and never seemed to give any coach a long enough time to build a team.
But seeing as Gruden's contract was 10 years for $100 million one has to ask if they are making as much progress as Mark Davis would have hoped when he brought Gruden out of retirement.
The big issue is the team's erratic inconsistency.
They beat the New Orleans Saints in Week 2 and handed the Kansas City Chiefs their only defeat of the season in Week 5 which shows they can keep up with some of the best teams in the league.
To prove it wasn’t a fluke, they nearly beat the Chiefs a second time in Week 11 but fell short by just 4 points.
However, they then followed that up in Week 12 with a 43-6 embarrassment against the Atlanta Falcons, who have been out of the playoff race most of the season.
It took a miracle play, and a helpful coaching call from Gregg Williams, to avoid being the only team the New York Jets beat all season in their Week 13 encounter. Had it not been for the miracle play at the end of the game, the Raiders would be on a five game losing streak right now.
In the middle of this run, Gruden also fired Defensive Coordinator Paul Guenther after the defense allowed over 200 yards rushing in back to back games against the winless New York Jets and the Indianapolis Colts.
It seems that the Raiders are doing something wrong going down the stretch as they started last season at 6-4 only to finish 1-5 to currently be at a 7-9 record.
With a 4-12 record in year one, this could still be seen as progress and heading in the right direction.
Or it could be seen as too slow of a build for owner Mark Davis’ liking.
The criticism of Gruden was always that he never truly built a great team. That he just inherited a great team in Tampa Bay that was built by Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy.
His critics will say that he was lucky to be in that situation and after knocking on the door for a few years under Dungy, Gruden did the easy bit of taking them over the line.
Others will say that he took a very good team and gave them the final touches to push them over the edge to become a Super Bowl champion.
As Warren Sapp, Defensive lineman on the great Tampa Bay defense one said: “Tony baked the cake and Jon put the icing on it.”
The facts are that the Raiders won’t be firing Jon Gruden any time soon as they have invested way too much into him.
They also chased him down for a long time beforehand so they obviously think he is their guy.
But they have two very big games coming up to try to salvage something from their lackluster season and there will need to be some playoff action in the 2021 season for Raider fans to feel Gruden is worth his price tag. If that is not the case, it may be time to consider moving on.
Darragh is a sports writer for La Tonique
