Oakland Raiders: 3 takeaways from Buffalo Bills loss

Sunday’s loss to the Buffalo Bills was painful. Here are three takeaways from the Oakland Raiders’ abysmal Week 8 performance versus Buffalo on the road.

This one hurts. The Oakland Raiders went to Western New York on Sunday and laid an egg against a surging Buffalo Bills team. Buffalo manhandled the Raiders to the tune of 34-14. The Bills exposed the Raiders as a playoff fraud. This was an opportunity to prove the Raiders were back and they completely blew it.

Oakland now finds itself at 3-5 on the season and in the basement of the AFC West. Losing by a point at home in Week 6 has the Los Angeles Chargers ahead of the Silver and Black by virtue of the head-to-head tiebreaker. Extracting anything positive from the Bills game is not happening, sadly.

Here are the three biggest takeaways from the Raiders’ loss to the Bills on Sunday.

The running game needs a complete makeover. What made this loss to Buffalo so disappointing is that you could see it coming from a mile away. Oakland was riding high after beating the arch rival Kansas City Chiefs on Thursday Night Football by a point over a week ago. The Raiders once again believed their own hype and that proved costly.

Not having Marshawn Lynch available in Sunday’s loss to Buffalo was a huge problem for the running game. While he hasn’t been great this year by any means, it wasn’t like Jalen Richard or DeAndre Washington were capable of being leaned on. Richard muffed two kicks and fumbled another. Washington’s fumble late in the first half swung momentum entirely in Buffalo’s favor.

Offensive coordinator Todd Downing’s decision to go from power to zone blocking up front has created a quagmire in the Oakland backfield. Frankly, none of the pieces fit. It would not be shocking if the Raiders had a completely different running back corps next year. When your most productive running back has been a receiver in Cordarrelle Patterson, you have some major problems in the ground game.

Surprise!: Buffalo is a playoff team. Somehow, some way, the Raiders found a way to overlook their opponent once again. Though the Bills haven’t made the AFC playoffs since 1999, they are about to party like it’s 1999. Surprise! The Bills are a playoff-caliber team. Credit to them, they’re good.

At 5-2 on the year, Buffalo plays a methodical brand of complementary football. The Bills know that they have limitations offensively, so ball security is paramount in Western New York. They play great, technically sound defense. Buffalo does a great job of being the aggressor on both sides of the trenches.

Though they play in the AFC East with the New England Patriots, the Bills feel like a No. 5 seed in the AFC playoff picture. They could win a road playoff game against the AFC South champion, thought the Jacksonville Jaguars are a mirror image of them as a football team. Oakland learned the hard way yesterday, the Bills are legit.

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The complacency has set in. Great… This is painful to admit, but the Raiders are in need of a locker room shakeup. Whatever worked last year is clearly not working this year. It almost feels like a handful of guys had career years a season ago and just didn’t put in the work to be great in 2017.

There is a certain stubbornness and a lack of accountability that has sank this once promising team. Oakland struggles to make adjustments in-game. It would not be shocking to see major overhauls to the roster and coaching staff this offseason. There’s no reason to single anybody out just yet, as it has been a collective disappointment.

Next: Raiders routed by Bills, 34-14: Highlights, recap

While the Raiders will have a shot at redemption this week on Sunday Night Football against the Miami Dolphins, can you really trust them to be a visiting team in South Beach? The last thing this Raiders team needs is the distractions associated with Miami. If the beatdown in Buffalo wasn’t a wake up call for the 2017 Raiders, what will it take then?

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