Quarterback under duress and sacked. The ground game smothered and rendered ineffective.
That’s the type of stuff that can scuttle an offensive coordinator — especially one that’s brand new to the team and orchestrating an offense in hostile territory, of all places. Oh, and not to mention inclement weather.
It was a perfect storm of events that should’ve sunk the Las Vegas Raiders boat. Turns out, the rain pelting the field and players had nothing on Chip Kelly.
The Silver & Black play caller didn’t flinch, remained bold, gave quarterback Geno Smith the ability to let it fly in Foxborough and that steered the Raiders to a 20-13 victory over the New England Patriots this past Sunday.
Conventional wisdom says football teams run the ball when the rain starts to fall. Kelly bucked that trend, and in turn, the Patriots, too. And that type of boldness from their offensive coordinator is exactly what the Raiders need to not only attain victory, but establish an identity for the 2025 campaign.
Are you familiar with the phrase “scared money don’t make no money”? The gist of the saying revolves around playing it safe and being overly cautious will not lead to significant growth or gains. That’s an apt expression when it comes to Las Vegas and its Week 1 win.
Instead of wilting to the pressure New England applied to his offense, Kelly went about his work. He dialed up plays to torch the Patriots’ blitz. At times, said calls were even the play action variety. That could’ve been logically mocked considering Las Vegas ground game was stymied by the Patriots defense. On the surface, it looked like an exercise in futility.
But Las Vegas sold the run look so well, it created the one situation that renders even the best intentions from ad defense moot: Eye violations.
New England got caught looking and Las Vegas took advantage.
When the Raiders needed it most, the synergy between the offensive coordinator, the offensive line, and quarterback were on display. Kelly dialed it up, the offensive line gave the quarterback time to operate, and Smith the courage to stand in the pocket and fling that thing. While there are many parts of the Raiders that are young, having that veteran signal caller who, despite getting smothered by the Patriots defense to the tune of four total sacks, paid dividends in the road opener.
“Yeah, I think it’s all the time we spend together, all the time in the meeting rooms, just hearing his voice and directly from him exactly what he wants to get accomplished with each and every play,” Smith said on Thursday when asked about his comfort in Kelly’s offense — intricate as it can be. “When I think about Chip, man, like he’s so cerebral and such a smart coach, and he’s always thinking of the next thing, the next layer to attack the defense. And that’s something that I’m always doing as well. So I think we mentioned that in that area, we’re football junkies, football nerds. He loves the game, I love the game. And I mean, it’s just we love being around each other. I think it’s just great synergy.”
Of course, last Sunday’s performance wasn’t perfect. Season openers tend to have miscues.
Las Vegas most refine the ground game and get production from rookie tailback Ashton Jeanty and the rest of the running back room. Jeanty did well to show up big as a pass protector for Smith. And he did have impressive totes. But the offensive line and Jeanty need to showcase the same in-sync nature the quarterback has with the play caller.
“Yeah, I mean, I don’t think I was too fired up. I mean, it’s football. You are always going to get fired up. But I think just in terms of the game, just making reads that I’ve always made and just being better, honestly,” Jeanty explained during his media session Thursday. “I mean, I didn’t play my best in the run game, and I’ll be working this week to be better at that and be better for the guys up front.”
If the Raiders can have explosive plays in both the air attack and ground game, that just makes Kelly’s offense that much harder to defend.
In the first game of Pete Carroll’s inaugural year as the Raiders head coach, the coaching staff he assembled didn’t allow the Silver & Black to wallow in mistakes. We’ve seen it plenty times before. When things go south for the Raiders, it really goes south — i.e. a bad loss.
“Yeah, we did adjust well at halftime. The game turned, you saw us come right back out after not really working as well as we like to on offense, we went right down the field again to get it started. Defense responded, I don’t know, five or six times in a row to keep them from scoring,” Carroll noted when asked about adjustments the team made in all three phases during the victory in New England. “And the momentum that was there to be had was really, I think, captured by our guys. So, I was really excited about that, and that did have to do with what Chip did and what Patrick (Graham) did and Tommy (McMahon). So everybody was on it, and we communicated really well, and the guys responded. It’s one thing for us to know what to do, but we have to get the point across to the fellas, and that took place.”
Now comes the hardest part: Consistency.
Kelly maintaining the boldness he showed in the opener goes a long way into ensuring the Raiders capture ever-elusive consistency.
0 CommentsSee More:
