With 5:20 on the clock in the 4th quarter, the Raiders took the ball at their own 20 yard line after giving up the go ahead touchdown to the Colts. The score was 21-17. They needed a touchdown to clinch a victory that seemed so unlikely that atheists everywhere would have been forced to reconsider the whole God thing. As if a documentable miracle was unfolding on national television, Terrelle Pryor marched the Raider offense down the field. On a third and one he completed a pass to his tight end, Jeron Mastrud for 41 yards. On 4th and 9, with the game hanging in the balance, the Raider offensive line staved off Indi defenders, allowing Pryor to complete a throw to Denarius Moore that took the team to a first and goal at the nine.
Just as the Abrahamic God was about to burst through the clouds to announce His undeniability to a cynical planet, Pryor took a sack: a big one all the way back to the 24 yard line. And with 30 seconds left he threw an interception inside the Colts ten yard line to end the game. God said, "Maybe some other time" and as predicted the Raiders fell to the colts. Still, It Was Good.
Pryor, despite his mistakes, was the primary reason the Raiders managed to be in the game until the closing seconds. He had runs of 26 and 29 yards on the way to rushing for 113 total yards on the day. Throughout the game, he was poised, accurate, and showed precisely why the coaches chose him to start over Matt Flynn. His ability to buy time, scramble, and create something from nothing kept the offense on the field and the Colts offense on the bench.
If you're a Raider fan and a fan of the game in general, you should have known that Pryor would make some mistakes; and he did. Taking that last sack, throwing two picks, missing some wide open throws; particularly one to Marcel Reece that may very well have gotten the Raiders a touchdown. If you care to play the hypothetical What If game, that's three scores that might have been. And if you do the math, that's anywhere from 6 to 10 points left on the field due to Pryor's errors of inexperience. Add it up and it's a big road win.
But that's okay. For the most part he took what the Colts defense gave him and made good decisions.
Here's a telling stat: the Raider offense got at least one first down on every single possession. They dominated time of possession and scared the hell out of Indi and Colt fans; and they did it on the road.
And good on the offensive coaching staff and Dennis Allen for putting together a game plan that made the most use of Pryor's skills and for showing a lot of creativity in that plan. The play-calling was also excellent. We didn't try to bang McFadden into the line all game long, hoping to minimize the use of Pryor. Instead, they made him go out and play the part of an NFL quarterback and he exceeded expectations.
The offensive line played much better in pass protection than anyone, including myself, gave them a chance in hell to do. A lot of that might have to do with having a quarterback who can escape almost every type of pressure that's thrown at him, but when they needed to pass protect the most, they got the job done.
That said, they were terrible at run blocking. McFadden ran into walls all game long and was never able to get anything decent going. Speaking of Darren McFadden...
I'm afraid it's now safe to say that he isn't the back he used to be. One play in particular that highlights his decline was when he was tackled in the open field by a linebacker on a 3rd down play that forced a punt. Two years ago, Darren McFadden in a one on one against any defender in the NFL would have juked the guy out of shoes or just straight ran his ass over en route to a 20+ yard gain.
In almost all cases it's unfair to say that a player isn't trying. In McFadden's case that goes double. The guy works his ass off. But I'm afraid that come the 2014 offseason Reggie McKenzie will be shopping for running backs while McFadden will end up trying to resurrect his former self somewhere else.
Defense
The Colts first two drives looked exactly like the script that had been written for this game by every sports writer and fan in the United States (again, I include myself in that number). Luck went 11/11 and threw two TD passes. It was shaping up to be the expected walkover. But then, of all things, our defensive coaching staff made effective adjustments to the Colts offense. Yes, they adjusted; a thing that was utterly absent on defense last year.
After the initial storm, the Colts only scored one more time. Granted, it was the winning score for them but the Raiders patched together defense of nobodies harassed Andrew Luck and the rest of the Colt offense for most of the game, sacking him four times and keeping Indi's rushing game under control.
Good on Jason Tarver and the rest of the Raider defensive staff for mixing things up, coming up with timely and effective blitzes, and keeping the Colts off balance.
Special Teams
I only include this to point out that Jano missed a field goal that was a bigtime contributor to this loss. Ouch. I don't know how much the new holder affects him but it shouldn't be that much. Whatever. He's still a great placekicker and the vast majority of the time you can count on an automatic 3 from him from 55 yards in.
I should probably throw in a compliment to the coverage teams too. They did their job.
Overall
Great game from the Raiders. They went on the road against a solid opponent that went 11-5 last season and gave them all they could handle. With the dearth of talent on this team that's all any Raider fan could have realistically asked for. It was so nice to see fear slowly spread across the faces of the fans in the stadium. And it wasn't only Colt fans who felt the pucker; Colt players and coaches had to check their pants by the end of the game to make sure they were still dry.
A win would have been great. Damn. But what I've harped on continuously is that all Raider fans can fairly expect this year is for the team to be competitive and put a scare into the better teams once in a while. And that's exactly what happened today.
No one knows what'll happen next week against Jacksonville, but based off today one would have to predict a win. The Jags look as horrible as ever. On the other hand, one of the phenomena of the first few weeks of the early NFL season is that even the bad teams play the good teams close. They don't know how bad they suck until around game four or five. Then the discouragement kicks in and they're exposed for how horrible they are. Maybe that's what happened today, but for the time being it was nice to see a Raider game go down to the wire; especially when it was thought that the game would look like a PETA slaughterhouse expose'.
Oh, and yes, I was very wrong about this game. I'm really happy about that.
Thanks for reading.
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