by David Zizmor
ALAMEDA–The Oakland Raiders who suffered a pretty humilating defeat at the hands of their division rivals the Kansas City Chiefs this last weekend. They lost big 56-31 that is the most points the Raiders have ever given up in a football game. It was done in dramatic fashion the Chiefs jumped out to a big lead they were up 21-0 just in the first quarter.
The big story in the game it was not only the 56 points but who scored them, five of those touchdowns were scored by the Chiefs Jamal Charles the tiny running back for the Chiefs and four of them on receptions. He became the first running back in NFL history to catch four touchdown passes in a game.
Scoring five touchdowns puts him in pretty rare company as well, five touchdowns is a huge accomplishment no matter what and at the NFL level it’s very, very rare and only three people have scored six touchdowns n a game and Charles might have had a shot at that becuase he had five touchdowns with 12 minutes left in the game he had a shot at it but he mostly sat on the bench from that point on.
Charles sat because the Chiefs were up by so much looking at it from the Raiders side this was a rough, rough loss, they were out of this one from the very beginning they really had no chance and what we’ve seen in the last few weeks is that the Raiders are falling apart on the defensive side of the football.
The Raiders have had a real tough time of it not only did they lose this game to the Chiefs last week they got hammered by a very bad New York Jets team they gave up 37 points to a Jets team that have had one of the worse offenses in the league. They lost to Dallas, Tennessee, you have to go all the way back to week 11 when they beat Houston and as we all know now is probably the team that’s going to get the number one pick in the draft that’s how bad they are.
The Raiders have had a really rough run it’s kind of disappointing their defense played really well in the first half of the season it was surprising and one of the reasons why everybody had low expectations for the Raiders was their defense. They’ve had a lot of new guys on the team and not necessarily all new but they had a lot of inexperienced guys some of them were rookies.
These were guys on the Raiders that have really never been starters at this top level and the Raiders had so little room under the cap they had to get what they could and for the most part that meant bargain basement shopping and early in the season they did a good job of motivating these guys in keeping offenses on their toes, the defense was surprising.
The Raiders face the San Diego Chargers on Sunday the 29th for their next game with a 1:25 PM kickoff at Qualcomm.
David Zizmor covers the NFL for Sportstalk Radio
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