Raiders look to regain winning momentum against winless Jets

Tuesday is traditionally the day in the NFL when players have off and coaches meet to formulate the game plan for the coming opponent, a task made far more difficult by the league’s decision to close down team facilities on Mondays and Tuesdays, starting this week.

Coach Jon Gruden was able to gather his staff together, but it was anything but normal.

The strategy session apparently went just about the same way every workplace’s Zoom meetings tend to turn out these days.

“Not all of us coaches are very technological,” Gruden said. “We’re not sound. (Offensive coordinator) Greg Olson has bad Wi-FI, another coach has a dog barking, another guy’s wife is yelling at him. It was hard to put together a game plan.”

The positive is that it would be difficult to have it turn out any worse than last Sunday’s 43-6 debacle in Atlanta.

The team’s worst effort of the season came on the heels of one of its best in a heartbreaking loss to Kansas City the previous week.

Now, both of those losses must be put in the past as the Raiders focus on another East Coast trip and a game against the winless Jets.

Gruden stopped short of calling it a must-win game, though he understands how devastating another defeat could be to the team’s playoff hopes.

“We didn’t lose last week because we were distracted, but we realize what’s at stake and we got to just play a lot better than we did a week ago. If we do, we will have a chance to survive.”

Here are three keys for the Raiders:

Keep perspective

Derek Carr has been on the wrong end of games like last week’s before.

Those types of efforts tend to have a lingering effect and make players want to come out and do the impossible by making a game-winning play on every single snap the next week.

That often leads to errors that can make one loss turn into two or more, as the Raiders found out last year. An ugly, unexpected loss to the Jets triggered a spiral that saw the Raiders lose five of the last six games.

They can’t let that happen again. Carr said it’s important to stick to the same process that has led to success, even if things didn’t work out last week.

Run for your lives

The Raiders will need their running game to take flight against the Jets, a week after it was grounded in Atlanta.

They were able to gain just 40 yards on 14 carries, failing to pick up at least 3.0 yards per attempt for the first time since a December 2018 game against Pittsburgh.

Star running back Josh Jacobs suffered an ankle injury, and fullback Alec Ingold has been dealing with broken ribs. Third-down specialist Jalen Richard was unavailable.

Still, the running game needs to find a way to get going.

“We have a big belief in running the football as an offensive staff,” Olson said. “We always believe it starts with the run.”

No self-inflicted wounds

There were several problems against the Falcons, though none was as glaring as the turnovers.

Las Vegas fumbled four times and threw an interception. The five turnovers were the same number the Raiders had committed in the previous seven games.

Sunday marked just the third multiple-turnover game of the season for the Raiders.

The penalties were just as much of a problem. The Raiders committed a season-high 11 in the blowout loss.

Seven of those came on defense.

“It’s hard enough to get (offenses) off the field on third down, let alone give them a first down on a third down, whether it be a (pass interference) or roughing the passer, we just can’t have it,” defensive coordinator Paul Guenther said. “We’re not good enough to give teams second at-bats with penalties, so we got to cut those back.”

After averaging just 44.2 penalty yards per game over the first 10 outings of the season, officials marched off 141 yards against the Raiders last week. Gruden did dispute some of the calls, though.

He said the team turned over film to the league on penalties he disputed, but acknowledged things must get cleaned up.

Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on Twitter.