Buffalo Bills at Las Vegas Raiders: 3 things we learned in Week 4

The Las Vegas Raiders fall to 2-2 after a 30-23 loss to the Buffalo Bills at home. They look to rebound as they travel to Kansas City next week.

In a very winnable game for the Las Vegas Raiders, the Buffalo Bills came into town and walked away with their perfect record in tact. Going into halftime, the Raiders were down 17-13, but once again, they struggled to play consistent football for a full 60 minutes.

The Defensive line again struggled to get pressure, the defensive backs were confused all game, and costly fumbles put to rest any chance this team had of mounting a comeback. They have lost two straight since getting out to a surprising 2-0 start, and have the hated Kansas City Chiefs on the horizon.

Here are three things we learned in week 4

Gruden was much too conservative

Once again, Jon Gruden was much too conservative with his play-calling in this game.  Driving down the field coming up to the end of the first half, with the Raiders getting the ball back in the second half, Gruden decided to kick a field goal on 4th and 2 instead of going for a first down.

Later on in the game, on 4th and 1, the most vanilla play in the history of plays gets called, and Josh Jacobs gets stuffed at the line of scrimmage.  What was the worst then those play calls? It looked like the game plan was to try to dink and dunk their way down the field.

The problem with that is once it wasn’t working, there was no adjustment at all. Gruden is going to have to open up his playbook a little more, even with the Raiders top two receivers out.  Nelson Agholor more than showed in this game that he can be a playmaker, and should’ve had two receiving touchdowns if not for his first getting called back by an offensive penalty.  Gruden also need to realize that this isn’t 1990’s to 2000’s football anymore, as you need to put seven on the board, because kicking field goal after field goal isn’t going to work in this new era of offense.