What the Fish Just Happened? Why the Raiders Were Routed by the Dolphins

It’s easy to blame the 34-14 debacle in Miami on the distraction caused by Rolando McClain’s legal troubles, but that would be a cop out. The Raiders were dominated in nearly every phase of the game by a Miami team I knew couldn’t be overlooked, and neither the offense nor the defense looked very good.

This loss is a tough one to swallow, because it puts the Raiders’ playoff hopes in jeopardy. For the last several years, the magic number to get into the postseason has been 10—if you manage to go 10-6, you almost always make the playoffs. Getting spanked by the ‘Fins puts the Raiders at 7-5, needing to win three of four to get to 10 wins.

With Green Bay, Detroit, Kansas City and San Diego left on the schedule, the Raiders will need to make major improvements to beat three of those foes, and when I say beat three of them, I mean the Lions, Chiefs and Chargers, because I will shave my head if the Raiders beat the Packers. If Matt Moore can torch the Raiders, what do you think Aaron Rodgers will do?

With the St. Tebow show continuing to roll with another fourth-quarter win, the Raiders now find themselves tied for first place in the AFC West with the Broncos, and Denver currently has the tiebreaker over Oakland.

You read that right: If the season ended today, the Denver Tebows would be going to the playoffs and the Raiders would be staying home for the playoffs—again. Life is a funny thing, huh?

How the hell did we get to this point? Read on and we’ll go over why the Raiders were flummoxed by the ‘Fins.

They were captured by the flags

What has cost the Raiders more wins than anything else in recent years? Three words: penalties, penalties, penalties. I am as tired of writing about it as Hue Jackson is of talking about it. The Raiders accumulate more flags than the United Nations—it’s always been that way, and it will always be that way.

Is it fair? As a lifelong Raider fan, I know that it’s not. The late Al Davis and the NFL shared a mutual hatred, and Mr. Davis tweaked the NFL anytime he could. He sued them in court, he abstained from votes to try to annoy management; he basically spent most of his later years trying to figure out ways to give the NFL the finger.

As fiercely loyal as Davis was to those he loved, he was equally vindictive to his enemies. Does it make sense that in response, the NFL enforced penalties more strictly on Oakland? Sure it does. Ask any Raider fan and he will agree: there are rules for 31 NFL teams, and then there are the Raider rules.

But the bottom line is: it does not matter. If there are Raider rules (cough, there are, cough), then the Raiders should be used to them by now. You need to play smarter, and the Raiders did not do that on Sunday.

Take, for instance, Richard Seymour’s weak left-handed punch on Richie Incognito in the third quarter, which earned him a 15-yard penalty and an early shower. Your team is down big in the second half, with a tiny chance of making the game competitive again: why are you throwing punches!?

As the veteran leader of the defense, the elder statesman on a very young team, an idiotic mistake like that is unforgivable. If I’m Jackson, I’m chewing Seymour out in a very public way this week, and if Seymour is half the leader he’s supposed to be, he will be the first to admit what a moronic and immature play it was.

I’ve never understood NFL players throwing punches, anyway. The other guy is wearing a freaking helmet, what exactly do you think that punch is going to do to him? It’s just going to make him laugh and hurt your knuckles.

They didn’t apply Moore pressure

I wasn’t a math major in college, but I know this much: five is more than four. If you send four pass rushers all day, no matter how talented they are, the offensive line is going to win that matchup most of the time.

All season long, I have publicly pleaded with defensive coordinator Chuck Bresnahan to blitz. Do I need to send him a Christmas present so maybe he’ll listen? If you don’t blitz regularly in this league, you won’t win, especially with how hard it is now to cover receivers without getting a penalty.

But again and again, the Raiders sent only four rushers and Matt Moore was sacked just once. For a team averaging five sacks a game the last few weeks, once sack against one of the worst offensive lines in football is inexcusable.

Next week, when the Raiders visit the defending champion Packers, the only chance they have to win (and it’s a very small chance) is to pressure the living hell out of Rodgers. If they insist on rushing only four most of the time, Rodgers is going to light them up like a Christmas tree.

The Carson show started late

The Dolphins have a great rushing defense—they came into today with the league’s seventh-best run defense, and they stayed true to form against Michael Bush, limiting the big back to just 1.8 yards per carry. The onus was on Carson Palmer to lead the offense, and he didn’t rise to the occasion. Palmer started 9-for-22 and the Dolphins went up 34-0 before the start of the fourth quarter.

I know the Raiders are missing arguably their two best receivers in Denarius Moore and Jacoby Ford, but Louis Murphy and Darrius Heyward-Bey have been starters in the NFL. Murphy has 78 career receptions, and Heyward-Bey leads the team this season in receptions and receiving yards.

Both receivers and Palmer needed to have a good game for the Raiders to win, and all three were severely disappointing (aside from Heyward-Bey’s nice late touchdown catch when the game was already over).

No matter how you slice it, this was a bad loss for Oakland. If the Raiders want to be playing football in January, it's going to take performances a lot better than this.

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