The Las Vegas Raiders’ hopes of a late-season push for the AFC playoffs took a big hit on Sunday.
The Raiders (2-8) lost their sixth straight game after allowing points on six of Miami’s seven drives, falling to the Dolphins 34-19.
“You can always make excuses and point to other things about details,” said Raiders defensive lineman Maxx Crosby. “Just playing for pride at this point.”
The team came off a bye week where coach Antonio Pierce made changes, including firing three offensive assistants, one of whom was offensive coordinator Luke Getsy. But even with these changes, the losing streak continued.
Miami’s Gardner Minshew completed 30 of 43 passes for 282 yards and two touchdowns. Tight end Brock Bowers, in his impressive rookie season, had 13 catches for 126 yards.
“A lot of positives to build on and I love the group we have,” Minshew said. “We’re just going to show up and keep going to work.”
Under interim offensive coordinator Scott Turner, Bowers was targeted 16 times. His 23-yard catch-and-run for a touchdown in the third quarter brought the Raiders within 17-12.
“There were definitely a few plays in there for me, for sure,” Bowers said. “It’s just my job to just catch the ball and get yards and that’s about it.”
The Raiders’ main issue on Sunday was keeping the Dolphins’ offense off the field. Miami opened the game with an 8:13-minute drive, capped by Tua Tagovailoa’s 1-yard touchdown pass to Jonnu Smith. Their second drive lasted 8:22 minutes and ended with a 31-yard field goal by Jason Sanders, putting Miami ahead 10-3 in the second quarter.
The drive that sealed the Raiders’ fate came after a busted coverage. Tagovailoa found an open Smith at the Raiders’ 30-yard line, and Smith ran it in for a 57-yard touchdown, giving the Dolphins a 31-19 lead with 3:19 left.
“Third downs, penalties on critical situations there,” coach Pierce said. “We had two third downs where we had the option to get off the field but penalties led to scoring drives, and then miscommunication obviously on the deep ball.”
The Raiders didn’t force a single punt or turnover during the game.
“They did a good job of getting rid of the ball quickly,” Crosby said. “I felt we did a good job of stopping the run. There’s a lot of things you have to look at. You just have to keep finding ways to improve.”
Raiders tight end Michael Mayer returned to action on Sunday after being placed on the non-football illness list on October 11. He caught one pass for 5 yards.
“I was still running routes and all that good stuff, so I was keeping everything in my mind,” Mayer said. “When I came back, it wasn’t very hard to sort of reiterate and sort of do the things that we were doing before I left.”
