Raiders Robbed by Refs, Lose Heartbreaker in Oakland by Four

(Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images)

It's a sad day in the NFL when one bad call changes a game.

For the Raiders, this one has to sting, considering they had the lead, they had scored, and were less than three minutes from winning.

If an earlier TD was allowed to stand, the game would have gone into overtime and would probably have had a different outcome.

Oakland, who was hot and cold on offense tonight, was tied with the Chargers at seven each when JaMarcus Russell hit Louis Murphy in the end zone. A good estimate of everyone in the stadium probably felt it was a Touchdown, both feet went down, it's a simple case in the NFL.

Ball in the hands, feet touch down, player completely in the end zone, right?

Shades of a snow job creep into your mind.

Some official in his little cubicle felt that because after the player was down, he let go of the ball that it was an incomplete pass.

This is caused by the official having only one view on the playing field.

Again, this was four points, the margin of victory in a tight game.

For Oakland, they did a lot of damage, knocking several Chargers from the game and keeping Rivers bottled up most of the night.

LT, for all his talk, never reached 100 yards rushing.

Richard Seymour provided some good support, with two sacks and six total tackles.

Probably the play that sticks in the mind was JaMarcus Russell's 57-yard bomb to Murphy, again to take the lead by three.

For the fans that gloated, it wasn't 42-10...it was 24-20.

I'd rather take a win, but apparently the officials had different ideas.

Items to note, Zach Miller again performed well, with six catches for 96 yards.

Darren McFadden and Michael Bush combined for over 100 yards and Bush got into the end zone to start the scoring in the first quarter. This may be a good thing, as last year we didn't score a touchdown in the first until week 14.

JaMarcus Russell had an episode late in the game when diving for a first down he got his knee hyper-extended and the Raiders had to send in Bruce Gradkowski. Bruce played decent football, getting 17 yards while the Raiders and refs played a series of downs, in which three flags were thrown on Cornell Green, and one on the player he was playing against.

Russell was able to reenter the game, and on a fourth and 15, hit Murphy for his touchdown.

If anything can be taken from this game...we kept it close, we had good pressure for most of the game.

If anything could be improved on, it would be Russell's accuracy with the WRs. 12-30, he managed 208 yards, but also threw a drive-killing INT in the first quarter too.

If the team can use this much defense against Kansas City...I don't think Matt Cassel will like the AFC West much.

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