Raiders report: Foster Moreau’s homecoming spoiled

NEW ORLEANS — Raiders tight end Foster Moreau fell one catch short of matching his career high in Sunday’s 24-0 loss to the Saints at the Caesars Superdome.

Moreau caught six passes in a game played three miles from his high school, but he was in no mood to celebrate.

“I love numbers, but statistics don’t really matter,” he said. “The only stat we care about is (that we lost) 24-0. We didn’t cross the 50 (-yard line) through the first (58) minutes of the game. They took it to us … if you look at it any other way, you’re just creating excuses.”

Moreau took on an increased role because Darren Waller was again ruled out after going through a pregame workout to test his injured hamstring.

With a huge contingent of friends and family looking on and Moreau jerseys scattered throughout the stadium, Moreau turned his six catches into 31 yards. The total is modest, but it accounted for nearly a third of Derek Carr’s passing yards.

“I know that he had a lot of family here, a lot of friends,” Carr said. “That’s a cool moment for his family to see someone who grew up here and probably dreamed of maybe playing here and end up going to LSU.”

Moreau, however, said he played “terrible.” He wasn’t alone. It was one of the ugliest performances in recent history for the Raiders, and Moreau said it was easy to see why.

“If all 46 of us or however many dress take a turn with making a bad play, we’ll have 46 bad plays on tape out of 130, and we just can’t do that,” he said. “That’s not winning football. And a couple of us took a number of turns. I took a number of turns.”

Moreau did appreciate the experience of playing close to home for the first time in his NFL career.

“It’s tough, but I’ll get to see them all after the game,” he said. “I didn’t want that to be after a 24-0 shutout.”

First-and-yuck

The Raiders offense didn’t do much well but was particularly ineffective on first-down plays, managing 25 yards on 21 opportunities.

“It’s a struggle,” Moreau said. “You have to stay on track on first down. We had a lot of third downs, and it’s tough to play winning football behind the sticks.”

The 1.18-yard average on first down was the fewest for the Raiders since a 1998 game when they managed 1.08 yards on first down in a 7-6 win over the Chargers.

“When you’re behind the sticks as we were a number of times, they can pin their ears back and rush,” coach Josh McDaniels said. “Being in the shotgun however many times we were and trying to dig out from long-yardage situations is never a good formula against a team that can rush the passer like they can.”

Streak snapped

Davante Adams had one catch for 3 yards, snapping a streak of 81 straight games with multiple receptions — the second-longest active streak in the NFL.

McDaniels said the lack of involvement for his star receiver was just one more example of what went wrong.

”I have to do a better job of finding him early in the game and getting him involved,” he said.

Adams couldn’t explain what went wrong.

“It’s going to be one we really have to see the tape,” he said. “We just came out a little flat. It was nothing on the back end (of their defense) that surprised anyone. It was just poor execution.”

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