Over the last two decades, the Raiders have been the league’s most penalized team. This is certainly not a new problem for the Silver and Black as their penalty woes date back to the 1970s.
However, that hasn’t been the case so far for the Raiders. In fact, they’ve actually been one of the better teams in the NFL when it comes to penalty yards.
According to Josh Dubow of the Associated Press, the Raiders are currently seventh in penalty yards at 148. Meanwhile, their opponents have racked up the penalty yards with 276 through four games.
#Raiders have been penalized for 148 yards, 7th fewest in NFL. Raiders opponents have been penalized for 276 yards, 2nd most.
— Josh Dubow (@JoshDubowAP) October 4, 2022
Josh McDaniels and company have preached being disciplined and not making unnecessary mistakes. While they haven’t always been able to accomplish that, the Raiders are cutting back on the penalties in a big way.
If this trend continues and the defense improves, look for the Raiders to start stacking up wins rather quickly. They’ll need to play an especially clean game against the Chiefs on Monday Night Football if they want to steal a win against arguably the best team in the conference.