The Raiders don’t need a total offensive makeover. They may just need a better angle.
Former Raiders lineman Lincoln Kennedy said this week that one tweak could help unlock a unit that looked out of sync on Sunday: more snaps with Kirk Cousins under center. After a rough outing in which the running game stalled and the passing game never really settled in, Kennedy argued that the offense would benefit from leaning into a different look.
“I still think that it would behoove this offense to put Kirk Cousins under center, but I’m not coaching,” Kennedy said on the Locked on Raiders Squad Show.
“Put him under center and try to use the play action that way because no one is fearing it out of the shotgun or the pistol. They’re not fearing it, and they’re not going for it.
So there’s a lot of things to be desired. This team is still learning.
I think they could be competitive. I just said coming into season, I would hope they double their amount of wins they had last year.”
That idea lines up with what head coach Klint Kubiak appears to value. Kubiak has long leaned into under-center football, and Mark Schlereth said after the Raiders’ Week 1 win over the Dolphins that Kubiak made that clear in a pregame conversation.
“They got into a bunch of under center stuff [prior to the game in week 1]. They were… the number two in the league at 52.6 percent of the time when [Kubiak] was with Seattle last year and then the Rams were the only ones that were under center at a higher percentage,” Schlereth said.
“He’s going to use it. So, I asked him, ‘What is it about under center?’
And I said my perspective is you open up your run game, so you’re not eliminating… [around] 35 percent of your run game. So, it opens up your run game, and it opens up your play action because your quarterback has to turn his back to the defense which makes everybody’s feet stop.
Safeties and linebackers stop.’
“But you know what he said? And this was something I hadn’t thought of, or I hadn’t really talked about.
He goes, ‘My number one thing about being under center, it makes the defense play legit, and they can’t rush the passer as well because every fake, they’ve got to stop. They’ve got to protect the run.
So, it makes our pass protection, our keys in protection so much better.”
Even with that philosophy, the numbers show the Raiders have already spent plenty of time under center. Sharp Football Analysis has them at 45.8 percent of plays from under center this season, which ranks 11th in the NFL.
The Bills lead the league at 55.3 percent, followed by the 49ers at 54.6, the Seahawks at 53.2, the Falcons at 51.3, the Lions at 50.6, the Patriots at 47.3, the Jaguars at 46.8, the Bears at 46.7, the Ravens at 46.1 and the Rams at 46.0.
It’s still a small sample early in the season, though, and game script has mattered. Against the Patriots, the Raiders were playing from behind and ended up running 75 percent of their plays from shotgun.
That kind of imbalance is hard to ignore. In a closer game, Kubiak’s offense would not be living out of shotgun that often.
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