This just in: the Oakland (for now) Raiders remain a clown show.
One week after getting scorched by 49ers quarterback Nick Mullens in his NFL debut and straight-up looking like they’d given up, Jon Gruden’s squad lost 20-6 to the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday in Oakland.
A play in Sunday’s fourth quarter really summarized the game, and the Raiders’ season. Trailing by 14 points with just over four minutes remaining, Oakland quarterback Derek Carr just threw the ball right into the ground on 4th-and-5 instead of trying to make a play. Even if nobody is open here, you have to at least just throw the ball up for grabs and maybe a Raider comes down with the ball.
Down 14 in the 4th quarter Derek Carr intentionally threw it into the ground….ON 4TH AND 5 pic.twitter.com/9iF95RMnG4
— Cody Tapp (@codybtapp) November 11, 2018
The Raiders are now an NFL-worst 1-8 with an NFL-worst -125 point differential. Their only win was against the Cleveland Browns, by three points, at home, in overtime. They traded their best player in Khalil Mack — a future Hall of Famer in his prime; he had two more sacks on Sunday, by the way — one week before the season began. They released pass-rusher Bruce Irvin — the team leader in sacks this season — last week.
It would be impossible for the Raiders’ team morale to *not* be terrible by now.
And after Sunday’s game, Matt Schneidman of The Mercury News tweeted that he overheard one Raiders player saying, “I gotta get the fuck outta here.”
One Raiders veteran to another, on his way out of the locker room past three reporters, including myself: “I gotta get the f*** outta here.”
— Matt Schneidman (@mattschneidman) November 12, 2018
This is surely the feeling of many Raiders players, and especially the veterans. That’s despite Gruden saying last week that he gets “a lot of phone calls from people that are dying to come play here,” and that he’s approached by players after “every game” that want to play for the Raiders. Uh huh. Sure.
The environment around the Raiders’ organization figures to only get more toxic as the 2018 season goes on.