Frustrations boiled over following the Raiders latest collapse. This one coming in Pittsburgh where the offense once again couldn’t score in the second half and blew their one-score lead.
No one expressed their frustrations quite as strongly as Josh Jacobs who had been carrying this team much of the season, but saw just 15 carries despite the cold weather suggesting a heavy does of the run.
The result was Derek Carr throwing three interceptions and the defense wearing down after a strong performance until the final ten minutes of the game.
Monday McDaniels was asked about Jacobs’s postgame comments and he had no issues with what Jacobs said.
“I love the guy. He should have the ball more than any other player on our team. And he has,” McDaniels said of Jacobs. “I love his passion, his fight, he wants to help us win in any way he can. We gotta do a better job of being productive so we can stay out of those situations where the running game becomes difficult to stick with.”
“Our guys want to win. There’s been a handful of guys that have done that. It’s an emotional sport, it’s an emotional game. Hell, I wasn’t real excited after the game either. So, I think the reality is you’re allowed to be frustrated. You handle it the right way and you do things the right way. JJ expressed his feelings. It is what it is, you’re going to have that at times. But I’ve said this a number of times; I love the guy. I think he stands for the right things. He wants to help us win. He should.”
It’s one thing to abandon the run. Generally speaking, that’s not a good idea when you have the league’s leading rusher. But if the defense is loading up the box to dare you to pass, you have to be able to accept that challenge and step up to force them to stay honest.
The Raiders simply weren’t able to do that. And this isn’t a problem that happened simply because it was cold outside.
“For us to be able to win at this time of the year, and be productive offensively, you have to throw the ball better than what we’ve done at time in the last month and a half,” McDaniels said. “We’ve been able to win some in spite of that overall, but clearly that’s not the goal. The goal would be to be more productive than what we have been.”
McDaniels says he thinks Derek Carr needs to play better, though he doesn’t place the blame solely on Carr for the failings in the pass game. But there’s no way around Carr taking a large share of the blame.
Carr’s numbers over the past four games has been abysmal. He has completed just over 53% of his passes over that time and has a passer rating of 66.8.
He has put up the two worst passer ratings of his career in two of the past three games while throwing more interceptions (six) than touchdowns (four).
No wonder the Steelers loaded up the box and dared Carr to beat them. That plan worked like a charm.
