Through the first two weeks of the 2017 season, the Oakland Raiders had one of the best offenses in the NFL. Oakland ranked fourth in total yards and led the NFL in scoring after Week 2, and also checked in at No. 2 in offensive efficiency, as determined by Football Outsiders' offensive DVOA. (DVOA is Defense-adjusted Value Over Average, which adjusts performance for down, distance, and opponent.)
To anyone that watched the Raiders last season, this likely did not come as much of a surprise. Oakland ranked sixth in yards, seventh in points, and eighth in DVOA a year ago, then added Marshawn Lynch this offseason to give their running game an additional mean streak. The Raiders being able to move the ball efficiently and rack up points was one of the safest bets of the 2017 season, and early on, it paid out.
But then the Raiders ran up against Washington last week and pulled a total no-show, putting forth what was easily their worst offensive performance since the start of the 2016 season.
Oakland punted the football or turned it over on eight of its first nine drives, with the lone exception being the "drive" where Carr kneeled on the football to end the first half. The Raiders' two scoring drives started on Washington's 18 and 12-yard lines, and they didn't have a single drive that lasted more than four plays until there were less than six minutes left in the fourth quarter. Of the Raiders' 19 regular season games in 2016 and 2017, last week's loss to Washington ranked last in plays from scrimmage (48), last in total yards (128), last in yards per play (2.67), last in time of possession (21:54), and second-to-last behind only last year's Derek Carr-less season finale in points scored (10).
Carr never got into a rhythm against Washington. He was intercepted on his first pass and sacked on each of his next two dropbacks, and didn't complete a pass until there were 21 seconds left in the first quarter. He finished the evening 19 of 31 for a paltry 118 yards, a touchdown, and two picks, good for a 52.9 passer rating.
Similarly, the Lynch-led running game never got untracked. Marshawn had three carries for 11 yards in the first quarter and three carries for seven yards the rest of the way. Jalen Richard and DeAndre Washington, so efficient with their touches in Weeks 1 and 2, ran three times for four yards combined. The vaunted Oakland offensive line -- one of the best in football -- looked slow and lost all night.
It was -- to borrow a phrase from a children's book -- a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad game.
And if there is any team in football you do not want to play when you're coming off a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad game, it's probably the Denver Broncos. The Broncos have been arguably the NFL's best defense over the last several seasons. Since 2013, the Broncos rank seventh in points allowed, second in yards allowed, second in yards allowed per play, third in opponent's passer rating, fourth in opponent's yard per rush attempt, first in sacks, and first in pressures. They also led the NFL in defensive DVOA in both 2015 and 2016.
They have elite players at every level of their defense. Von Miller is annually among the best pass-rushers in football, and he's already off to a good start with three sacks in three games this season. He's joined in quarterback-harassment by Shaquil Barrett (doing an excellent job filling in for Shane Ray, who was expected to replace DeMarcus Ware but landed on IR to start the season), as well as Derek Wolfe (one of the most underrated defensive linemen in the NFL), Adam Gotsis, Kasim Edebali, and Shelby Harris.
Brandon Marshall and Todd Davis form a formidable inside linebacker duo, and of course, the Broncos have what is likely the NFL's best trio of defensive backs. I've made it clear in the past that I consider Chris Harris the current owner of the Best Cornerback in Football title; Aqib Talib has long been one of the most consistent shadow corners in the league; and Bradley Roby would likely be a top-two defensive back on somewhere around 28 or 29 other teams.
Given all that, you might expect to hear that the Raiders are in for even more trouble this weekend. That may in fact turn out to be the case, but a look at the one Raiders-Broncos game for which Carr was healthy last year shows that there is a path toward success for Oakland.
Not counting the three kneel-downs by Carr, the Raiders ran the ball 40 times for 221 yards in that game, an average of 5.52 per carry. Some of that total is inflated by a 42-yard run from Latavius Murray, but even excluding that particular carry, the Raiders gained 4.59 yards a pop on their rushing plays.
How did they do it? Well, mostly by running as far away from Von Miller and Derek Wolfe as possible. Miller spends almost all of his time rushing off the right side of the offensive formation, and Wolfe often joins him on that side of the field. So all the Raiders did was run it in the opposite direction.
Of their 39 designed runs in that game (43 carries minutes three kneels and a scramble from Carr), 20 of them went either off left guard, off left tackle, or off left end. Those 20 carries gained 101 yards, a healthy five-per-carry average. It's no coincidence that running behind Kelechi Osemele and Donald Penn led to success; Osemele is probably the single nastiest run-blocker in the league and Penn has excelled at mowing people down in the run game for years. Even this season the Raiders' best runs have come to either side of left guard. They're averaging 4.6 yards per carry on runs between Osemele and Penn, and 8.9 per carry when rushing between Osemele and center Rodney Hudson. (Subtract a 43-yard run through that hole and they're still at 5.8 a pop.)
Barrett has done a better job this season of stopping the run than Ray did a year ago, but if the Raiders want to put their stamp on the game and establish their preferred tempo, running the ball to the left side of the field early and often is the way to go.
The Raiders love to mash people up with the run early on so that they can work their play-action game and give Carr all the time in the world to throw the rest of the day. Their offensive line is huge and usually gives him elite level protection; that's a key for Carr because he generally experiences one of the biggest drop-offs in the league when under pressure, but it's doubly important to give him that time against Denver because Amari Cooper, Michael Crabtree, Seth Roberts, and Jared Cook will need extra time to get open against the Broncos' defensive backs.
It's imperative to not get one-dimensional against Denver, because if you let the Broncos pin their ears back and rush the passer, you will not succeed. The Cowboys, one of the best running teams in the NFL, found that out two weeks ago. Carr can win games with his arm against typical defenses, but the Broncos are not a typical defense. What the Raiders have to do is put him in advantageous situations, and the best way to do that is by playing to the strength of their run game.