Tensions high as Adams unhappy with playcalling after Raiders loss

By Case Keefer (contact)

Monday, Nov. 7, 2022 | 2 a.m.

Derek Carr paused to collect his thoughts, sighed deeply twice, started answering a question about the Raiders’ latest blown lead and ensuing loss before stopping himself.

There was a lot the Raiders’ veteran quarterback wanted to say after a 27-20 defeat to the Jaguars — the team’s fifth straight loss on the road to start the season — but only so much he felt he should divulge.

“To be honest, I don’t need to say it here,” Carr said once he restarted in his postgame news conference. “There are things that will be said, there are things that need to be addressed. But I think as a whole, the urgency part of it, after 30 minutes of football, we have to learn that the game is not over. I feel like I’ve been in this situation a lot — new coaches or this and that and you have to teach the new guys, ‘This is how we do it. This is the mentality,’ and that gets tiring.”

It sure sounded like Carr could have been hinting at some displeasure with coach Josh McDaniels and the rest of the staff after Las Vegas squandered a 17-0 lead for the third time this season. Moments later, fellow captain and top receiver Davante Adams all but confirmed it.

Carr and Adams met for several minutes in the corner of the visitor’s locker room before fulfilling their media obligations, and as they so often are as best friends and team captains, seemed to be on the same page. Adams offered a more pointed criticism about how he went from having nine catches for 146 yards and two touchdowns in the first half to one reception for no yards in the second half.

He stayed diplomatic in saying he loved the coaches “to death” and “wouldn’t trade them at all,” but also stated his, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ ethos.

“At the end of the day, if I’m rolling in certain situations like that, or the pass game is something that’s helping us move the ball and win games then obviously that’s the idea,” Adams said. “You want to stick with what’s working.”

Disappointment is nothing new for this year’s Raiders after they fell to 2-6 on the season with the loss to the Jaguars. But the postgame mood was different in all the preceding losses, even in last week’s shutout defeat at the Saints where team appeared shellshocked.

The recesses of TIAA Bank Field appeared to be the first place where their frustrations regarding what’s so far been a flop of a season really boiled over. The quarterback and coach will always take the bulk of the blame for an underperforming team, but until Sunday’s game, there was at least no outwardly tension between the two men in those positions for the Raiders.

That may no longer be true. As an apparent extension of Carr, Adams said the Jaguars didn’t do anything on the field that should have slowed him down in the second half.

“I wouldn’t look at it like that,” Adams said. “I’ve played in a million games where I could tell you, ‘Yes,’ but there wasn’t any magic thing that was done. We could have continued doing what we were doing in the first half and, who knows, but I feel like we didn’t put ourselves in the best position just based off the way we came in the second half.”

McDaniels’ answer on whether Jacksonville took away Adams in the second half was drastically different.

“He had some production against single coverage (in the first half) and then I’d say, second half, there was a little bit more split-safety defense in general,” McDaniels said in his postgame news conference.

McDaniels caught some heat last week after Adams had only two touches — one reception and one carry on an end-around — in New Orleans and clearly set out to fix it in Jacksonville. Las Vegas’ game script at the start of the game heavily featured Adams, who had six catches for 80 yards in the first 10 minutes.

He caught his first touchdown over the shoulder on a 25-yard route down the sideline. The second came when the Jaguars bit on a pair of play-action fakes — the home team was consumed with slowing Raiders running back Josh Jacobs in the first half — to leave Adams wide open in the corner of the end zone for a 38-yard score.

That made the score 17-0, but the Raiders’ only points the rest of the way came from a 38-yard field goal from kicker Daniel Carlson — his second of the day to give him 41 consecutive successful attempts — shortly before halftime.

“It’s not good enough,” McDaniels said. “I know that. We’ve got to coach better in situations like that. We’ve got to avoid feeling like the situation is OK. I don’t sense that our team relaxes when we have (a lead) but obviously that might be the wrong thing. We’ve played some good stretches of football that are good enough to get ahead and produce a lead but that’s not what this league is about. This league is about playing the second half just as well as you played the first half.”

Jaguars kick returner Jamal Agnew returned the second-half kickoff 52 yards, a harbinger of what was to come. Las Vegas could no longer contain Jacksonville.

Jaguars running back Travis Etienne Jr. started getting loose, finishing with 27 carries for 109 yards and two touchdowns. His longtime teammate dating back to college at Clemson, quarterback Trevor Lawrence, was highly efficient with 235 passing yards while completing 25 of 31 passes.

Lawrence threw a touchdown pass to Christian Kirk to score five minutes after Agnew’s kick return, while Etienne scored the go-ahead touchdown to start the fourth quarter.

“They did a better job of certainly making some adjustments, changing a few things there in the second half,” McDaniels said. “From the opening kickoff of the third quarter, I thought they just seemed like they were a little ahead of us.”

Las Vegas’ defense finally settled down and got the offense the ball back twice in the final three minutes. But by then, the Raiders were all out of sync.

They had spent the second half trying to establish Jacobs, who finished with 67 yards on 17 carries, while their passing efficiency fizzled out. Carr completed only five of 15 pass attempts for 36 yards after halftime — as opposed to going 16-for-21 for 223 yards in the first half — and couldn’t get anything going in the pair of game-winning drive opportunities.

Trailing 24-20 after a missed 41-yard field goal by Jacksonville kicker Riley Patterson before the two-minute warning, Carr completed one pass to Hunter Renfrow but then saw three straight attempts fall incomplete including two forced to Adams in coverage. Patterson made a field goal on Jacksonville’s, a 48-yarder, to give Las Vegas the ball back with just more than a minute remaining.

But Carr nearly threw an interception on first down, with Adams having to knock the ball out of Jaguars cornerback Montaric Brown’s hands. On second down, Adams couldn’t quite grab a high pass over that tipped off his hands.

“We don’t call the play as players and (the coaches) don’t go make the play so it’s the same thing,” Adams said. “(The coaches) are going to say we have to execute and make that play over the middle and he’s absolutely right.”

Adams wouldn’t get another chance. Jaguars defensive end Dawuane Smoot had his second sack of the game on third down, and Carr threw a short pass to Brandon Bolden that turned into a series of laterals on 4^th-and-17.

“Let’s not sit here and say we didn’t have chances,” McDaniels said. “We certainly had chances in the second half to complete balls to (Adams) and anybody else. It wasn’t like we didn’t have opportunities there. They didn’t double him to the point where we couldn’t throw balls to him, but I didn’t feel like we were as efficient in the second half.”

The numbers bear that out, as Adams had eight targets in the second half — only one fewer than the nine he attracted in the first half. But, for the most part, he wasn’t happy with the looks called for him and “not scared” to share his true feelings afterwards.

Losing was bound to wear down the Raiders at some point and send them turning on each other, and the first instance came after the Jaguars’ game.

“If you look at the type of team we have, there’s no reason we should be losing games like this and it’s frustrating,” Adams said. “If we played for a (expletive) team then it’s one thing but that’s not what it is. You can say whatever you want on the outside based on the product and we’re not winning the way we need to, but the way we lose, we’re right there.”

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or