FOXBOROUGH, Mass.—How the Las Vegas Raiders performed in a 45-17 road loss to the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium on Sunday:
Offense: D-
The Raiders couldn’t muster any offense to speak of. All day. Kirk Cousins was ineffective. The running game sputtered.
The lone highlight was the NFL debut of No. 1 pick Fernando Mendoza.
Defense: F
That was atrocious.
The Raiders were beat at the line of scrimmage and may have been even worse in coverage. Drake Maye and the Patriots got whatever they wanted on Sunday, marching up and down the field at will.
Not only did he have open receivers all day, but had plenty of time to find them with almost no pressure to speak of throughout the game.
The question now becomes whether it was just a bad day or if offenses are starting to figure out Rob Leonard’s scheme. It’s a copycat league, so the Raiders certainly hope its not the latter.
This group has been excellent this season. Sunday’s performance was concerning.
Special teams: C
The Raiders actually did a decent job on special teams, but it was lost in everything else being such a mess.
Deven Thompkins was called up from the practice squad and actually provided a bit of a spark in the return game on both punts and kickoffs. AJ Cole delivered a typical great punting game.
Matt Gay did, however, miss his first field goal of the season and it came at a time when the game was still actually competitive. He also tried another drop kick onside kick that spun around on the field a bit and looked interesting, but it never made it the full 10 yards.
Coaching: D
Outside of the play of Thompkins, what was there to even be encouraged about coming out of Sunday’s game?
Klint Kubiak’s team was dominated on both sides of the ball from scheme to execution.
It wasn’t pretty.
The worst part was how unexpected such a performance was from a team that had been so solid in so many different areas this season.
They turned the ball over, committed penalties and were sloppy. All of the things it looked like they had cleaned up over the first month of the season.
Kubiak thought his team was doing a good job of mentally processing its first loss last week, but they will face an even bigger challenge to move on from whatever that was on Sunday with the Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Rams coming to Allegiant Stadium the next two weeks.
Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.