After starting the season a perfect 3-0, the Las Vegas Raiders have come crashing back down to earth, dropping their 4th straight contest on Sunday against the Los Angeles Rams 35-21.
With the loss, the Raiders now sit at 3-4 on the season and occupy the 3rd spot in AFC West standings behind Denver and Kansas City. Starting QB Kirk Cousins was 26 for 44 on the afternoon, throwing for 295 yards and 2 TDs in the loss. Nevertheless, head coach Klint Kubiak told reporters after the game the team was considering all possibilities following another disappointing on field performance.
“We have to go watch the film,” Kubiak said. “I think at this point, we’re thinking about everything to fix our problems, how to fix our issues in the red zone, in the third quarter, personnel [and] scheme. We’ve got to talk about all of it.”
This spring’s top pick, QB Fernando Mendoza, got a brief taste of NFL action on October 11th against the New England Patriots, coming in for some mop up duty in a blowout loss. The former Indiana Hoosier was 6 for 8 for 48 yards through the air in his cup of coffee as the team’s quarterback in Foxborough.
As a result, the Raiders find themselves in a peculiar spot. The team was likely playing over their head at 3-0, but certainly aren’t as bad as their last 4 games would indicate either. On the year Cousins is 3rd in the NFL in passing yards, and 1st in passing TDs, but also has stretches where his play can sometimes take his team out of the ballgame. The latter of which was on full display this past weekend as Vegas’ lacklustre offence put them in a 28-6 hole at halftime.
The veteran QB has been forthright in his assessment of the team’s quarterback situation, telling reporters that he’ll do whatever the team feels is in the best interest of the organization. “I want the football team to have the best chance to win games,” Cousins said. “[During] the first OTA [practice], if that had become apparent, I would’ve been the first one to say, ‘Yeah, you can’t play me.'”
At 3-4, the team is far from out of the playoff mix, so Kubiak will need to weigh the team’s long term development of Mendoza as their franchise QB of the future vs. the opportunity to win now and fight for a playoff spot this season. The question, is whether the “good stats, bad outcomes” version of Cousins the team has seen over the last 4 games is what gives them the best chance to compete on Sundays at present.
For his part, Mendoza has respected the process all along, and will be happy to take over starting duties whenever the organization feels like he’s ready. But as we’ve seen with countless young QBs entering the league in recent years, too much too soon can oftentimes prove detrimental to their long term development.
The Raiders have an interesting schedule ahead. A soft landing spot for a rookie QB would be against the Jets on November 1st. However that’s then followed by a gauntlet of defensive units in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, and Cleveland. It could very well be that the team opts to remain with Cousins under centre until it becomes clear that they are either out of the playoff mix entirely, or his play dips further.
December 13th against the currently winless Chargers kicks off a stretch of four games that includes dates against the Titans and Cardinals which might be a better slate for a rookie QB to get his first stretch of starts. Whatever the team opts to do, if their QB struggles against the Jets this coming weekend, the discourse around the club’s QB room will only intensify moving forward.
Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.