Oakland Raiders Film Room: Week 6 (SD)

Offense

Oakland did a lot of things right offensively against San Diego, and only a few things wrong. Carr was allowed to air the ball up over and over again, trusting Oakland’s tall receivers to go up and make a play – yielding mostly positive results. The power run game finally came alive. RBs McFadden and Jones-Drew combined to earn 110 yards on 18 carries with both achieving more than 5.5 yards per carry. At times they looked like one of the better offenses in the league.

Derek Carr looked beyond impressive. His arm strength, decision makings skills, and accuracy was on display against a league top 5 pass coverage San Diego secondary. Looking at two of his TD passes, we’ll see how he was able to throw beautiful passes that gave his receivers the best opportunity to make a play away from the defender.

Credit: NFL Game Rewind

On the first drive of the game QB Derek Carr airs it up to WR Andre Holmes for the quick TD. Oakland lines up in a doubles slot formation with 11 personnel (1 RB, 1 TE, 3 WRs) and runs TE Mychal Rivera and Holmes toward each of the seams (between the numbers and the hash marks). San Diego uses their nickel package (3 DLs, 3 LBs, 5 DBs) and a very tricky disguised hybrid coverage (man to the 3 receiver side, zone to the single receiver side) against Oakland. Here’s the beauty of this play… Holmes begins his route as though it’s a simple post route. As San Diego CB Brandon Flowers fights to maintain position over Holmes after contact with his own man Holmes makes his vertical break upfield. Pay attention to when Carr starts his throwing motion. When Carr starts his throwing motion he’s throwing to an empty area on the field that Holmes isn’t even running to yet, but him and Holmes are is sync and once the catch is made it’s open field all the way to the end zone. Absolute elite-level pass.

Credit: NFL Game Rewind

In the middle of the second quarter Oakland once again turns to 11 personnel (1 RB, 1 TE, 3 WRs) and motions WR James Jones into a cluster formation on the right side. TE Rivera and WR Brice Butler run a standard Hi-Lo concept with Jones running a delayed snag route behind them. San Diego uses another exotic coverage from their nickel sub-package (4 DLs, 2 LBs, 5 DBs). The team is in Cover 6 (half the field is covered by one deep DB like Cover 2, while the other half of the field is split into fourths by two deep DBs like Cover 4/Quarters). On the Cover 2 side (bottom of the image) they run man coverage, and on the Cover 4 side (top) they run a zone. Carr looks first to the Hi-Lo, then to Jones on the snag route and fires a laser beam into Jones for the TD. Great placement: low and away from the defenders so only Jones can get it.