Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels has been too conservative this year

Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels has been too conservative this year

Raiders defense is not good enough for this approach

In Las Vegas this year, the defense is currently 24th in points allowed, 24th in yards, and most importantly, 31st in takeaways. The 2022 Raiders don’t force turnovers, give up a ton of yards, way too many points, and don’t make things easy for their offense in any shape or form.

McDaniels has been coaching his Raiders as if he has a world-beating defense on the other side of the ball and that has caused a great deal of their issues this year.

It is easy to protect a 2 or 3 score lead when you have three things, an ability to rush the passer, the capacity to force turnovers, and a great run game. The Raiders’ run game has come on strong in several games this year and they have forced some timely turnovers to protect leads, most notably against Houston and Denver, but in the balance of things they have not been able to generate takeaways consistently.

When teams are down a few scores they almost always become one-dimensional and start throwing the ball around the park. That’s when a defense’s pass rush can take over a game and keep an opponent down but the Raiders are near the bottom of the league in sacks and sack percentage, so they don’t do that consistently either.

With his defense’s weaknesses, McDaniels needed to adjust his play-calling and rather than taking his traditional sit on a lead approach, he needed to be more aggressive, and he hasn’t done that. From the four big blown leads this season, that has been the consistent theme in 3 of them.