Coordinator’s job in jeopardy after offense struggles
That the Raiders have gone from sixth in total offense last season to tied for 19th this season is a root cause of their fall from 12-4 to 6-9 with one game remaining in 2017.
It is also the reason that Todd Downing — promoted to offensive coordinator before this season — has become the object of much job-related speculation as the year winds to a close.
“Well, obviously a lot of things have gone in a negative direction,” Del Rio said Wednesday when asked to assess Downing’s first season as coordinator. “But I do know the guy’s super-bright. He’s going to be a real good coach in this league. And I believe in him.
“Those are not things that people want to hear right now, because the reality is we’ve underperformed offensively this year. And so there are naturally going to be those kind of questions. I think we all understand that. I understand it, he understands it.
“But it doesn’t change my belief. It’s what I know. But there have been a tough set of circumstances. And things have not gone real smooth, and not what we’re looking for.”
The Raiders’ offensive struggles have been across the board. They are 25th in rushing offense (96.6 yards per game), 23rd in scoring (19.4) and 30th in scrimmage plays per game (59.9). Last year, they ranked 6th, 7th and 11th in those categories, respectively.
Quarterback Derek Carr has embodied the unit’s regression, his quarterback rating dropping from 96.7 last year to 86. Carr’s completion percentage is down from 63.8 to 62.4, with fewer touchdown passes (21) and double the number of interceptions (12) as in 2016.
Carr and Downing, the Raiders’ quarterbacks coach in 2015 and ’16, joked during training camp about being able to finish each other’s sentences. But the offense has been out of sync most of a season in which it was expected to be the primary strength of a playoff contender.
Carr was asked Wednesday whether those preseason expectations were too lofty.
“I don’t think so,” Carr said. “I don’t think so, because when we show flashes of what we can be, then everyone’s like, ‘Oh, there it is.’ But then we weren’t consistent enough. We were not consistent enough all year, especially in the details of our assignments.”
The offense needing to focus on “details” has become a recurring theme in Carr’s news conferences. Del Rio phrased it another way Wednesday: “Execution of basic plays.”
“Guy ran a wrong route at a bad time, guy broke down in protection at a bad time, quarterback maybe didn’t see a guy come open that he could have,” Del Rio said. “Things like that, a little bit here, a little bit there, it adds up to inefficient play and performance.”
Del Rio cited Monday night’s 19-10 loss at Philadelphia as an example of mistakes on the field hurting the Raiders. Against a team playing for the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs, the Raiders compiled more yards, had better field position and had the ball near midfield with less than a minute left in a 10-10 game, but lost largely because of five second-half turnovers.
“I look at that game, I look at any game that we played this year, and I didn’t feel like it was an overwhelmingly impossible task for us,” Del Rio said. “Really, I feel like we let one get away. And it’s kind of been that way a little bit for us this year.”
Del Rio pointed to turnovers as the “biggest difference” from last season. Tied for the best turnover margin in the league last year at plus-16, the Raiders are 29th at minus-12.
“We had an example last year of us going and closing games like (Monday) and winning those things,” Del Rio said. “It comes down to making plays.”
Carr suggested Wednesday that the offense fell into damaging tendencies over the course of the season and was unable to recover. Whether that will lead to changes remains to be seen. Del Rio said he would get into “seasonending talk” after Sunday’s finale against the Chargers.
“They talk about habits and things like that, well, bad habits take a while to break, too,” Carr said. “We have to be able to address those things. It’s simple but not easy.
“It takes every man in there to say, ‘This is what I need to fix and what I need to address.’ Long as we don’t point fingers and blame other people, we’ll just look in the mirror and fix what we have to do. And collectively, we will be better.”