Curse of Mack: Former Raider puts old team in dire spot with third straight loss

By Case Keefer (contact)

Monday, Oct. 2, 2023 | 2 a.m.

The nadir of the Raiders’ recent era on the field came when they traded homegrown former Defensive Player of the Year winner Khalil Mack and bottomed out to a 4-12 record in 2018.

Some have argued that the move has haunted the franchise ever since, a camp that’s surely growing after the Raiders lost to the Chargers 24-17 Sunday at SoFi Stadium. Mack may have ushered in a new low point for his original team in the game with a historically dominant defensive performance for the Chargers.

Mack registered six sacks (tied for the second-most ever in a single NFL game), four quarterback hits, two tackles for loss and two forced fumbles. He was the biggest factor in spoiling the NFL regular-season debut of rookie quarterback Aidan O’Connell.  

“I was just holding the ball a little too long,” O’Connell explained. “I’ve got to move through my reads faster and do a better job of doing that quickly to get the ball out of my hands. Those are my mistakes I’ve got to clean up.”

Las Vegas ultimately turned to the fourth-round draft pick out of Purdue over established backup Brian Hoyer with starting quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo unable to clear the concussion protocol. The 25-year-old O’Connell performed relatively well, throwing for 238 yards while completing 24 of 39 passes and nearly leading the Raiders to an improbable late-game comeback.

The hopes all but ended when he threw his first and only interception on the three-yard line to Asante Samuel Jr. with 2:39 remaining. It was O’Connell’s third turnover of the day, following a drop amid a collapsed pocket after a pump fake on the Raiders’ third drive and a Mack-spurred fumble on their fourth.

O’Connell would have received high marks if it wasn’t for his turnover problems and struggles under pressure.

A similar tale fits the Raiders as a whole.

If it wasn’t for one or two things, they likely could have exorcised the curse of Mack and escaped with a second AFC West victory this season.

“We’re shooting ourselves in the foot a lot,” wide receiver Davante Adams said. “I really don’t know what to say. We’ve got to play better. We’ve got to do things earlier in the game and be more urgent earlier to put ourselves in better position so we don’t have to scramble at the end of the games.”

The Raiders have now lost in back-to-back weeks by virtually identical scores — the final tally to the Pittsburgh Steelers last week was 23-18 — despite having the ball inside the 10-yard line late in the fourth quarter with a chance to tie both games. The failure to do so has left them with a 1-3 record when they could just as easily be sitting at 3-1.

It’s the second consecutive year that they’ve dealt with an early three-game losing skid under coach Josh McDaniels, but there’s an argument to be made that this one is more alarming. There was still some hope that last year’s team could dig out of an 0-3 hole because of the veteran star quality of the roster, but McDaniels and general manager Dave Zielger purged a lot of it this offseason.

The power duo wanted to get younger and more familiar, so they stocked up on draft picks and players who had previously worked under them with the New England Patriots. But youth comes with mistakes, as O’Connell showed — and he looks the furthest along out of the Raiders’ nine-player draft class.     

And if Ziegler and McDaniels were seeking to instill Las Vegas with a pair of New England’s trademarks in discipline and ball security with the newcomers, it’s failed.

The Raiders sit last in the league with a -9 turnover margin and 29^th with 37 penalties. The officials flagged Las Vegas nine times for 8 yards against the Chargers, and many of the infractions were extremely costly.

“The big penalties are big penalties for a reason,” McDaniels said. “They hurt you…They are obviously killers.”

And against the Chargers, it was mostly McDaniels’ and Ziegler’s handpicked players who were making them. Defensive tackle Jerry Tillery, who was claimed off waivers from the Chargers midway through last season, was ejected after blasting former teammate Justin Herbert along the sidelines early in the second quarter.

Even team captain Maxx Crosby — who was terrific against the Chargers with a pair of sacks and a forced fumble — raised his hands in disbelief over the hit as a fracas began to rage on the home sideline.

The dirty play appeared to spark something in the Chargers, which then scored on back-to-back possessions with Herbert first hitting receiver Keenan Allen on a seven-yard slant and then sneaking in his second rushing touchdown. O’Connell had snuck in his own touchdown in the first quarter to tie the game at 7, but the onslaught gave the Chargers three straight scores and a 24-7 halftime lead.

“Stupid (expletive), undisciplined football,” running back Josh Jacobs said while not trying to hide his anger after the game. “This league is too competitive. There are too many guys who are too good to go out there and not do the little things right every play, so until we figure that (expletive) out, it’s just going to be what it is.”

The first play of the second half featured Mack strip-sacking O’Connell again, but guard Dylan Parham — who later left the game with an injury — recovered the fumble. To their credit, the Raiders appeared to regroup from there.

The defense forced a three-and-out on the Chargers’ next drive, and then nabbed their first interception of the year following a 22-yard field goal from Daniel Carlson to get within two scores.

Crosby got Herbert on the run and forced him into an ill-advised pass that safety Tre’von Moehrig took the other way nearly 40 yards into the Chargers’ red zone. But a penalty on team captain Robert Spillane for a crack-back block negated the return and pushed the Raiders all the way back to their own 24-yard line.

“The best thing we can do is coach the right technique and fundamentals and when each man is faced with one of those situations in the game, they’ve got to try to make a good decision for the team,” McDaniels said of the penalties. “Some of those are very close. They are bang-bang plays and that’s what officials get paid to call. We’ll try to work hard at eliminating them.”

Herbert injured his non-throwing hand in a collision with Crosby at the end of the interception and it appeared to negatively affect the Chargers’ offensively for the rest of the game. He only threw four more times and finished with a measly 167 yards on 13-for-24 passing.

Crosby stuffed Herbert on a fourth-and-1 sneak from the Raiders’ 34-yard line with 3:34 remaining to give O’Connell a chance at a game-tying drive. He connected with Adams, who finished with eight catches for 75 yards, on a fourth-and-10 from the 22-yard line for 19 yards to earn a first-and-goal.

The next play was the interception with Samuel fooling O’Connell by playing back before jumping the route upon the quarterback’s release.

“Right as I let it go, I knew it was a bad decision,” O’Connell said. “It was a look I saw in practice. Coach did a good job of preparing me and I’ve just got to do a better job of executing.”

O’Connell was far from perfect but he did enough to give the Raiders a chance to win. That's all they could have asked for given that he ideally would have never seen the field for significant action this season.

But the Raiders weren’t sharp around him, and they couldn’t slow one of their most accomplished still-active ex-players. Mack has now beaten Las Vegas in three consecutive seasons with two different teams.

“We jammed him, chipped him, hit him in the ribs, did everything we could to affect him with another player and then we had a tackle assigned to him as well,” McDaniels said of Mack. “He had a great day. We were trying to put people over there on the right side, where he was for the most part, and he did better than what we did.”

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