By Scott Kacsmar
If games were 30 minutes long, the Las Vegas Raiders would have been a playoff team in 2022. But Josh McDaniels’ return to the head coaching ranks showed an incredible failure in game management. That is how a team finishes with a 6-11 record and a league-high six blown leads in the fourth quarter.
Not everything was bad last year for McDaniels. His offense was functional even if it did not bring out the best in quarterback Derek Carr. By benching Carr for the final two games of 2022, McDaniels effectively put an end to the Carr tenure after nine seasons and no playoff wins.
McDaniels is reunited with Jimmy Garoppolo, the quarterback who was supposed to replace Tom Brady in New England years ago. Now, Garoppolo will play for a team that has the retired Brady as a new minority owner.
Sportsbooks are not expecting much out of the Raiders in 2023. Their over/under win total is just 6.5 wins as they are projected to finish last in the tough AFC West. But could Garoppolo actually be a better fit than Carr for McDaniels, and will this defense ever step up?
We look back at last year’s historic ineptitude while leading, the key offseason changes, how positive regression could help improve the record, and the best Raiders bets for 2023.
2022 Season Recap: Close Only Counts in Horseshoes
No team played in more close games than the Raiders last year as 15 of their 17 games were within one score in the fourth quarter. Their record was 6-9 in those games, which is not terrible in the context that this team had another subpar defense and Derek Carr did not have one of his better seasons.
The Raiders even picked up half their wins on the final play of the game:
- Week 11 at Denver: After forcing overtime, the Raiders put things away quickly with a 35-yard touchdown pass to Davante Adams in a 22-16 win.
- Week 12 at Seattle: For the second week in a row on the road, the Raiders scored a game-winning touchdown in overtime after Josh Jacobs raced 86 yards, which was 35 yards longer than the previous longest run of his career.
- Week 15 vs. New England: In one of the most improbable finishes in NFL history, the Patriots attempted an ill-advised lateral at midfield in the closing seconds of a tied game, and the ball went right to Chandler Jones, who returned it 48 yards with no time left to beat his former team.
When we get into regression talk later for this team, do keep in mind they were fortunate in a few of their wins last year too. That lateral by Jakobi Meyers, who is now with the Raiders, was a ridiculous decision that you just do not expect to see from a team coached by Bill Belichick.
But the close losses by the Raiders were often excruciating to watch as the team usually looked like the better team for half or two-thirds of the game before imploding. Choosing which blown lead was your favorite for the 2022 Raiders is a challenge:
- Week 2 vs. Arizona: Despite leading 20-0 at halftime and by 16 points in the fourth quarter, the Raiders allowed the Cardinals to force overtime, including a 2-point conversion that took Kyler Murray 20 seconds from snap to score to complete. The Raiders lost in overtime after Hunter Renfrow’s fumbled completion was returned for a touchdown.
- Week 5 at Kansas City: While the Raiders did not lead in the fourth quarter, they were up 17-0 early, and trailing 30-29 late, Davante Adams was unable to haul in a pass at midfield and the Raiders turned the ball over on downs.
- Week 9 at Jacksonville: The Raiders blew another 17-0 lead to the Jaguars, a team that had one such comeback win in their franchise’s first 455 games.
- Week 10 at Indianapolis: Two weeks after tweeting the Raiders looked horrible, Colts interim coach Jeff Saturday was coaching against them. Despite having no previous coaching experience, Saturday won the game with a comeback by Matt Ryan. Saturday did not win another game the rest of the season and will likely have his only win as an NFL head coach against McDaniels’ Raiders.
- Week 14 at LA Rams: Despite leading 16-3 in the fourth quarter, the Raiders allowed Baker Mayfield, who joined the Rams 48 hours earlier, to lead two touchdown drives in a 17-16 shocker. Mayfield’s last drive was 98 yards in the final 1:45 too.
- Week 16 at Pittsburgh: To celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Immaculate Reception, the Raiders watched rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett lead a game-winning touchdown drive with 46 seconds left in a 13-10 final. The last pass of Carr’s career in Vegas was an interception.
- Week 17 vs. San Francisco: The first start of Jarrett Stidham’s NFL career saw him pass for 365 yards and 3 touchdowns against the No. 1 defense. But his interception in overtime set up the 49ers for an easy field goal in a 37-34 escape.
A lot to choose from, but letting Baker Mayfield do that in a season where he was so bad and had just joined a team that didn’t even have Cooper Kupp available has to be No. 1.
Even if the Raiders only lost half of those games (Cardinals, Rams, and Colts are great examples), they could have been a wild card team. They may not have been a threat to a team like the Bills or Bengals, but there were positives with the offense.
Josh Jacobs had his finest season yet and won his first rushing title with 1,653 yards. Davante Adams wasted no time in making his trade from Green Bay worth it. He had 100 catches for 1,516 yards and led the NFL with 14 touchdown catches. Incredibly, Adams had 8 touchdown catches of 30-plus yards thrown to him by Carr, matching the total Adams had from Aaron Rodgers in eight seasons together in Green Bay.
But everything from untimely turnovers to dropped passes to the defense’s inability to get a stop prevented this team from a solid record.
Offseason Review
It was definitely time for the Raiders to move on from Derek Carr at quarterback. Short of reaching with the No. 7 pick on Kentucky quarterback Will Levis or making a blockbuster trade to move up higher for another quarterback, the Raiders probably made their wisest move in 2023 by acquiring Jimmy Garoppolo.
Garoppolo has the experience and knowledge with McDaniels’ offense. He has weapons around him in Adams, Jacobs, Renfrow, and the team drafted Notre Dame tight end Michael Mayer in the second round. They added Jakobi Meyers from New England, so he has experience with McDaniels too, and he hopefully will never try a reckless lateral ever again.
But Garoppolo is a polarizing figure as no one believes he is as good as his career statistics, which are rather eye-popping when you consider his completion percentage (67.6%) and yards per attempt (8.3) are among the highest in NFL history.
In fact, if you look at the top five quarterbacks in EPA/play since 2014 (playoffs included and min. 750 plays), you get a very interesting list from the data at rbsdm.com.
- Patrick Mahomes (.296)
- Drew Brees (.199)
- Aaron Rodgers (.196)
- Jimmy Garoppolo (.195)
- Tom Brady (.195)
Does anyone believe Garoppolo is in that tier of quarterbacks? He is not, but when he starts, the results are not bad. Garoppolo is 44-19 as a starter, and most of those games were for San Francisco’s Kyle Shanahan, who was 8-29 as a head coach without Garoppolo as his starter before going on a run late last year with rookie Brock Purdy.
Shanahan’s system and the incredible YAC skills of players like Deebo Samuel and George Kittle have been credited for having more to do with Garoppolo’s stats than Garoppolo himself. But while he may very well be a handsomer Matt Schaub type of system quarterback, having someone who is coachable and can run the system the coach wants is very important to a control freak like McDaniels. This is why things may work better with Garoppolo than they did with Carr last year.
The YAC is not going to be there like it was in San Francisco, but who saw Carr throwing so many deep touchdowns to Adams last year? The play-action passing game should work and that is something Garoppolo can continue having success with on his new team.
We only saw Garoppolo in one brief preseason appearance for the Raiders, but he was 4-for-4 for 39 yards. This will be an interesting experiment as McDaniels and Garoppolo try to do their thing in Las Vegas years after they thought they’d be the future in New England.
But what Garoppolo may miss even more from the 49ers is a great defense. The Raiders have not been an adequate defense for many years. Last year, they struggled again as only Maxx Crosby (12.5) and Chandler Jones (4.5) had more than 2.0 sacks. But Jones was a big disappointment in his first season with the team as he usually is one of the best at converting his pressures into sacks.
With only 27 sacks and a league-worst 13 takeaways, including a league-worst 6 interceptions, the Raiders need more splash plays on defense. They drafted Tyree Wilson from Texas Tech with that No. 7 pick. He can learn behind Crosby and Jones and spell them this year.
Veteran corner Marcus Peters is one of the best ball magnets with 32 interceptions since 2015, but he has been slowed by injury and last season was the first time he did not have multiple interceptions in a season. But as a gambler, he could be someone who increases the picks for this defense.
Just on regression alone they should be able to get more than 13 takeaways and 6 picks.
This Year’s Area of Interest: Positive Regression on the Way?
Yes, regression to the mean can move both ways in the NFL. A team that blows six fourth-quarter leads like the Raiders is likely to do better the following season while a team with a record number of comeback wins like Minnesota (8) last year should have a worse record in close games in 2023.
In fact, the Raiders should play in fewer close games period this year after a league-high 15 (tied with Denver for the most) last year. That means more blowouts (both ways). While some may argue that Carr was an asset in close games, Garoppolo is not incapable of putting together a drive in crunch time. Maybe in the playoffs he is, but overall, he is 12-12 (.500) at game-winning drive opportunities. Only Patrick Mahomes (18-15, .545) is better among active starters. Carr was 34-42 (.447) in his career.
It is not like the Raiders had much more to do to win some of those games last year. It was just a historically bad case of game management and finishing off leads:
- The 2022 Raiders lost 3 games after leading by 17-plus points, tying the NFL record held by the 2003 Falcons and 2020 Chargers.
- The 2022 Raiders lost 4 games after leading by double digits at halftime, a new regular-season record.
- The 2022 Raiders lost 5 games after leading by double digits in the second half, a new regular-season record.
- The 2022 Raiders lost 6 games after leading in the fourth quarter, the most of any team in 2022.
The 2022 Raiders also lost 5 games after starting the fourth quarter with the lead, tied with 11 other teams for the most such games in a regular season. Nine of those 11 teams improved their win percentage the following year, including the Raiders in 1997-98 and again in 1999-00.
The Raiders were only outscored by 23 points last year, and that includes an 18-point loss in the season finale against the Chiefs. It was the 8th-best scoring differential for a team with at least 11 losses since the 1970 merger. If you look at the seven teams who ranked higher than the 2022 Raiders, all of them won at least two more games the next season, and only two did not finish .500 or better.
Las Vegas was better than its record last year. This is the kind of team that usually will improve its record the next year, even if it is by a single game.
Best Bets for the 2023 Raiders
No one is saying pick the Raiders for the playoffs, but adding a successful quarterback, strengthening the pass rush, expecting more takeaways and fewer blown leads should add up to at least a 7-10 record. Marginal improvement, but still enough to hit the over at better than even odds.
In Week 14, the Raiders host the Vikings in what should be the close-game regression matchup of the year. Do not be surprised if the Raiders win that one, win in Indianapolis this year, and McDaniels will also try to improve to 3-0 against Bill Belichick as a head coach.
The division games are still going to be tough, and Denver should be better with Sean Payton there. But there are enough winnable games here to think the Raiders will get to 7-10 at the very least.
Will it be as entertaining and nail-biting as last season? Probably not. Will it be a disaster like McDaniels’ second year in Denver when he was fired after a 3-9 start in 2010? Hopefully not.
Those years with Kyle Orton are also a good reminder that McDaniels knows how to coach offense, and Garoppolo should at least be serviceable this year. Biggest concern is his durability, though fourth-round rookie quarterback Aidan O’Connell was impressive in the preseason with significant playing time in every game. That may be a name to remember this year.
NFL Pick: Las Vegas Raiders over 6.5 wins (+108 at FanDuel)
