Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver Tre Tucker (11) carries the ball against the Green Bay Packers during the first half of an NFL game at Allegiant Stadium Monday, Oct. 9, 2023. With turner are Las Vegas Raiders offensive tackle Kolton Miller (74) and tight end Austin Hooper (81)
Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023 | 2 a.m.
The Raiders have talked all season about getting more players involved in their offense, and finally appeared to commit to the more egalitarian approach in a Monday Night Football victory over the Green Bay Packers.
Las Vegas set season-highs with nine different players targeted in the passing game, and six different ball-carriers logging a rushing attempt. But the success and overall usefulness of the spreading-the-wealth plan going forward largely depends on how you view it, or who you ask.
“It’s cool, but I don’t care,” star receiver Davante Adams said in his weekly news conference Wednesday at the team’s headquarters in Henderson. “If two people touch the ball and we score 50 points, I’d rather that than have 90 people touch the ball in a game and you can’t score over 20 points.”
Las Vegas is the only team in the NFL yet to eclipse the 20-point mark in a single game through five weeks. It’s a short bar the Raiders (2-3) will again attempt to clear at 1:05 p.m. Sunday in a Week 6 game against the New England Patriots (1-4) at Allegiant Stadium.
Even the Patriots, who have the league’s lowest-scoring offense at 11 points per game, got to 20 once, in a five-point Week 1 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.
Adams’ continued frustration with the Raiders’ offense therefore makes sense. He expressed unhappiness that he couldn’t do more to fix the unit against his former team as he managed only four caches for 45 yards while continuing to nurse a shoulder injury.
Regardless of the win, it certainly felt like the Raiders’ offense could have performed better against the Packers considering they averaged only 4.4 yards per play, the worst mark in four games with quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.
But Garoppolo was among a larger group who sounded more encouraged with small triumphs to lesser-used skill players. Offensive coordinator Mick Lombardi mentioned a pair of long passes for first downs to rookie tight end Michael Mayer and a long third-down conversion on a dump-off pass to running back Ameer Abdullah as wrinkles the Raiders could build on.
“That’s kind of a good recipe for us, different guys getting yards,” Garoppolo said. “It keeps the defense on their toes. That makes it tough on those guys. We’ve got a lot of weapons, and it’s my job to use them.”
Three weapons stand above the rest: Adams, running back Josh Jacobs and wide receiver Jakobi Meyers.
Even with the concerted effort to include more players in the offensive game plan lately, the trio is accounting for 77% of the team’s carries and receptions on the year. That’s an extremely high usage rate in a league moving more towards utilizing larger groups of running backs and receivers.
Led by Meyers (75 yards on seven receptions) and Jacobs (89 yards on 25 touches), the three players still gained 209 of the team’s 304 yards gained against the Packers.
But the value of giving others a chance could be argued by the efficiency, as everyone outside of Adams, Meyers and Jacobs combined for 95 yards on 15 plays for a stronger 6.3 yard per play average.
“I think more than not, you like that,” Raiders coach Josh McDaniels said. “We have confidence in all of them. They all can do things when they touch the field and touch the ball. The more guys that you get involved, the more (the defense has) to defend. Certainly with us, we’ve learned over the last year and a half, sometimes the ball gets forced to go to other places too. The quarterbacks make the right decision and see the coverage out the right way. You’ve got to take the profit and sometimes that may not be necessarily your first or second read on the play, but just try to do the right thing and get the ball to the right person.”
It might be natural to expect players like Mayer and fellow rookie receiver Tre Tucker, who gained 16 yards on a jet sweep early against the Packers, to take off now that they’re being featured more often. But McDaniels seemed to be inferring that nothing was a guarantee.
He’s notoriously rigid when it comes to his offense, not only calling the plays but dictating where he wants passes to go, or at least his quarterback's first several reads. Some of the touches that went to complementary Raiders on Monday surely weren’t by design but rather a result of the Packers’ focus on Adams and Jacobs particularly.
It’s difficult for teams to assign extra bodies to both of them consistently — not to mention Meyers as well — so a safer bet might be that one of the Raiders’ big three offensive weapons will continue to be a focal point on a game-by-game basis. There’s still a chance that a more balanced attack becomes the default plan going forward though.
Adams can get behind either strategy, as long as the offense starts to post better results.
“You can win a game and look (expletive), and we’ve done that too many times,” Adams said. “We’ve got to start changing the way things look.”
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
Join the Discussion:
Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.
Full comments policy