Steven Senne / Associated Press
Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Derek Carr watches from the sideline in the second half of an NFL football game against the New England Patriots, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2020, in Foxborough, Mass.
Monday, Sept. 28, 2020 | 5:08 p.m.
They’re just clichés; they don’t mean anything, right?
“You’ve got to take it one game at a time.”
“We can’t get ahead of ourselves.”
“Next guy up.”
“Trust the process.”
“You’ve got to have a short memory.”
Head out to Big League Dreams or Sunset Park on any weeknight pre- or post-pandemic and you’ll hear recreational softball players who think they’re trying out for the Yankees say it after a teammate makes an error: “Don’t let it beat you twice.”
To a large percentage of us, these clichés really don’t mean anything.
But here’s the thing: They matter to football teams with championship cultures. These clichés became cliché because we hear them over and over again. And we hear them over and over again because players and coaches have for decades been saying them over and over again. And they say these things precisely because they believe in them, because they are true.
The question is whether players say them out of rote memory, or because they legitimately buy in to the thinking behind the cliché. The words on their own mean little if the players do not apply them in the locker room.
So there was quarterback Derek Carr, after his Las Vegas Raiders let a competitive game get away from them Sunday at New England and lost 36-20, offering up a cliché: “It’s one game.”
It doesn’t define the season.
We will know more about the Raiders’ mettle this time next week, after the team returns home to play the undefeated Buffalo Bills.
In years past, even during those all-too-rare post-millennial seasons in which the Raiders have looked like contenders, a punch in the face like they took from the Patriots has been enough to stun them for more than one game — they’ve let it beat them twice.
Last year, for instance, after a promising 6-4 start that included a brutal five-game road stretch and three losses by an average of 19 points a game, the Raiders were in position to make a playoff run, but got punched in the mouth, hard, by the New York Jets on the road, a 34-3 loss.
There are all kinds of reasons for losing, and for the Raiders’ slide — injuries, lack of depth — but that Jets loss wasn’t just one game for the 2019 Raiders. It set off a three-game streak of blowout losses, and a close home loss to a Jacksonville team that had dropped five games in a row, effectively ended the Raiders’ playoff hopes.
Championship teams really don’t let one error force another. Last year, the Kansas City Chiefs lost back-to-back home games, and then their MVP quarterback got injured. They lost two more in the next four weeks, but the team kept its fight, trusted in the next guy up, took one game at a time and reeled off nine in a row to capture its first Lombardi Trophy since the 1969 season.
In 2018, the Patriots got thumped by the Detroit Lions and fell to 1-2 early in the season, but dusted themselves off and ended the season holding up their sixth Lombardi Trophy.
You could run down the list of almost all Super Bowl winners and find some point in their season when they were outclassed or manhandled. After all, only one team has ever gone undefeated and won the Super Bowl. What all of the championship teams have in common is that they didn’t fold. They believed it was one bump in the road. They trusted the process.
Carr expounded Sunday: “If we’re gonna blow up everything after the good things that we’ve done after one game, then this game ain’t for some of those people. We are just fine. We’re gonna be fine.”
He’s right. That doesn’t mean there aren’t course corrections to be made to prevent the same mistakes that left the team open to the Patriots’ haymakers. New England knocked the Raiders on their heels with a varied rushing attack initially featuring speedy J.J. Taylor, then grinding forward with Rex Burkhead and Sony Michel. The Raiders missed a 41-yard field goal, the defense began playing undisciplined football and soon a 13-10 game was 29-13 and out of reach.
“We just got to be in our gap and do our job and make tackles,” defensive end Maxx Crosby said.
A championship team will learn from the mistakes and put the game in its rearview mirror, because to championship teams, the clichés are everything.
“Pride and poise.”
“Commitment to excellence.”
“Just win, baby.”
They’re not just clichés when the players and coaches live by them.
