The Las Vegas Raiders came out of Sunday’s win over the Miami Dolphins looking like a team with a real identity - and a few obvious holes.
That was the split screen in the victory: one version of the Raiders leaned on the run game and a disruptive defense, and that version looked good enough to hang around all season. The other version still showed the growing pains you’d expect from a rebuilding team, especially one trying to survive without enough playmakers on the perimeter.
First-year head coach Klint Kubiak has something to build on, but there’s no pretending the road is clean.
A big part of the appeal right now is the pairing of Kubiak’s ground attack and defensive coordinator Rob Leonard’s scheme. Leonard, working from the kind of layered, multiple look you’d expect from a disciple of Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald, threw plenty at Miami quarterback Malik Willis. Linebacker pick stunts, simulated pressures and all kinds of disguises from the front and back end forced Willis into uncomfortable reads and made the pocket feel crowded.
“With players and coaches, you practice how you play,” Kubiak told reporters on Monday. “He's been excellent throughout this entire journey from April until now.
You can definitely see how hard the guys want to play for him. His staff works extremely hard I thought on Sunday, yesterday they worked really well together, and the defense played hard.
And now that game's behind us. We got to go do it again."
On offense, the line looked like a completely different unit than last year’s rough group, and that changed everything. It opened lanes for Ashton Jeanty, who ran for 102 yards and added two touchdown catches, while rookie Mike Washington chipped in with roughly six yards per carry. The result was a run game that looked not just functional, but dangerous.
“I think we've got two guys that are playing good football,” Kubiak said. “Ashton obviously had a really good game, and we expect more from Mike.
Not that he didn't play well, I'm saying Mike played really well, but if he were to get 10 more carries, I know he'd do a great job. But it was his first NFL game, and so we got a good look at how he responded against ones versus ones."
There’s a clear blueprint here for Las Vegas. The Raiders have two backs who can work in tandem, and Dylan Laube gives them another option at No.
- When Brock Bowers returns at tight end, the passing game should have more punch and more flexibility.
Even so, the flaws are easy to spot, especially with a tough stretch ahead. The wide receivers haven’t been consistent, and the vertical game isn’t really there.
Kirk Cousins didn’t go downfield often, and the Dolphins did a solid job of taking away those shots when they came up. At this point in Cousins’ career, the deep ball doesn’t look like the part of the offense that’s going to carry things until Fernando Mendoza makes his first start.
Kubiak joked that the only way to fix the vertical passing game was to “chuck it deep.”
There’s also the issue on third down, where inefficiency could become a problem.
And on the other side, this young defense is going to have its rough patches. That’s part of the package for the Raiders this season.
Against the league’s best teams, the talent gap on both sides of the ball will show up, and there will be ugly stretches. But Sunday still offered something meaningful: the pieces are there, and the win gave Raider Nation a reason to feel good about what’s taking shape.
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