Don’t let Mahomes being back completely overshadow the defense
 

3 straight good performances. All under 20 pts.

The young guys are starting to gel and the veterans are playing much better ball.

Everybody calling for Spags to be fired is dumb.

I think we've played some pretty poor offenses, but the defense has done exactly what it's supposed to. We can make a Super Bowl with this defense for sure and that's really all we need.

Giants and the Packers without Rodgers? Yea, absolutely.

But the Raiders? Their offense is good enough to say the defense is clearly significantly better than the one from the first several weeks.

Defense looked good for a half..then shit their leg until a bit of a lucky turnover. Then looked good.

Agree with that. But this is a Raiders team still finding itself without its leading receiver (and only effective deep threat) and head coach. They're not remotely at equilibrium.

Still, the defense dominated today. Looked amazing.

Yeah, I've thought for weeks the defensive numbers had to average out some... play teams that can score 30ppg, give up 30+ppg. And do that for 5 of 7 weeks, your defense is going to look terrible.

Get closer to the average NFL offense, they suddenly look better.

Of course, they've looked especially bad at times and still looked bad against the Eagles and what not, so not trying to take away from the improvement.... but, it was also bound to happen against all the cries of "historically bad!!!!"

Raiders without Ruggs is definitely a handicap.

But we put Waller and Jacobs in handcuffs all game long, which isn't an easy task. Very promising stuff from these guys.

There’s nothing lucky about a forced error. Great play by Fenton when Jackson struggled to get control of the ball which slowed him down just long enough.

Also, the defense got ****ed in the 1at half with the ST’s fumble after forcing a punt. If anything, the two plays canceled each other out.

Shut up bitch.

It worked tonight and probably feels great but, Mahomes is a tad too greedy.

It was always a player and talent problem. Frank, Reed and Jones getting off their asses and doing shit and Ingram coming in.

Pressure has changed everything

Defense kicking ass. I have noticed. They are keeping team with out points.

Irony…

We had a lot of new faces coming into this season. They were on the same page tonight. Mahomes took a huge step mentally. Offensive line played great even with Wylie.

Melvin Ingram brought a spark to this team too. Just what we needed. Huge trade by Veach.

Even Sorenson made plays tonight

They lack some playmakers, but that OL is still good, and you saw when we didn't get pressure Carr can sling it.

But we fisted those fools. :rockon:

Ding ding ding.

The stats aren’t even necessary. This defense passes the eye test because they’re now getting pressure on the QB while not getting gashed in the run game. That’s a recipe for success.

It's not hard to understand.

Clark was hurt but it took time for him to come back and now he's playing much better.

Gay was hurt and he's our best LBer.

Jones was hurt and is now playing more DT where he's elite.

Ward was hurt and he's much better than Hughes.

Sorenson seeing the field a lot less.

Ingram is an upgrade over Okafor and Danna.

Sneed is finding his groove again.

Individually, meh. But collectively they pretty clearly explain the improvement.

Defense has been great lately. Do it again next week and the rest of the league will start shitting themselves.

We're the number 2 scoring defense over the past 5 weeks.

Wylie was not good. But everything else you said s correct.

They did a good job on nullifying Waller and Renfrow.

Im still mad Sorenson stole Thornhills int ��

Im sure Thornhill was like this guy needs it more than I do

Let's see what happens next week against a real offense with 2 stud WR's and one of the hottest QB's in the league.

But they definitely have been playing alot better the last 3 weeks.

The defense kept our season alive. Major kudos. Tons of positives.

Honestly this defense was never going to be top 5. As long as they are not a severe liability this team will be tough to beat, especially when the offense clicks.

Holding them to 14 on the road is impressive. Carr was on pace for over 5k and shit his pants good tonight. Their run gane did absolutely nothing.

I still don’t think they are good but if they are even mediocre instead of league worst, that’s good enough to make the team a contender. The signs are there they can be mediocre.

I've been as hard on the defense as anyone but the fact is they've held teams to 14 points or less the last few games. That's good no matter how you cut it up.

Not having to stop a team on a short field multiple times also helped.

Anybody expecting us to shut the Cowboys offense down is going to be disappointed.

We just need to get a few stops. They will get theirs.

How is that? Even great defenses give up a couple good drives most games.

Watts had 7 tackles tonight.

NFL has to write a different narrative tomorrow. Something tells me they don't want to. They'll hold off a bit until we beat DAL. Then we're back.

They haven’t faced a good offense the last three weeks. That likely has a great deal to do with these outcomes as well.

Uh. LVR came in averaging nearly 400yds/game, and nearly 300 of that was passing. They led the league this season in plays over 20 yards.

The defense played a very good game tonight. Not elite or top-5, but a very encouraging result. If they can clean up some more of the small stuff and somehow get a little more juice out of the pass rush, they'll be a solid top-10-12 defense and if tonight's offensive performance wasn't a one-off, we'll coast into the playoffs and have a legit shot at a Super Bowl berth.

Lotta 'ifs' but there it is.

Ingram added a spark and we are finally seeing our guys healthy and hungry.

Badger looked into it as well.

Nice to see Jarran Reed get a sack and Dirty Dan an int too.

No you can't crown them yet, but they have absolutely put the clamps on elite players like Derrick Henry, Aaron Jones, Waller, etc. in recent weeks. It's a huge step up from what we saw at the beginning of the year. They're playing better.

Having Gay, Ingram, and Clark makes a huge difference. We didn't have those three early. Plus Bolton creaming 3 players a game has added a toughness we haven't seen since Derick Johnson. So much better. Hats off to Sneed, HB, and the rest of the secondary.

Didn't hear Niemann's name being called once tonight.

I think that's because he wasn't on the field.

That's a very good thing. I think Spags is learning.

I did not even notice him in the game at all until the final Raiders drive in garbage time....which is a good thing.

No, he and Sorensen were in on the 3rd down package all night. They just didn't put those two on Waller.

This is not the Raiders offense that was. It is a shadow of itself now.

The D just looks so much different than what we saw in the first half of the Titans game. Since then, they have been fantastic. Next weekend is going to be a real challenge for them. The Cowboys O is legit.

the defense if it plays the rest of the season like it did last night is good enough. they were a liability and they stopped multiple drives

good enough is all they need to be

Jarran Reed emerging from the side of a milk carton is huge for this defense.

Ingram has played decent but he's been huge only because it kicked jones inside. And that makes EVERYBODY better on the DL.

Honey Badger is starting to play with positive fire again.

Not a fan of Sorensen but it was pretty cool to see the D rally around him after a good play. They look like they're enjoying football again.

Probably so, but this Raider offense would’ve looked top 10 against the Chiefs defense from earlier in the season.

Sorensen caught a can of corn.

LMAO Watts not being a complete scrub in garbage time got me irritated with Spags all over again. It's nice the players are finally doing what they're paid for but he still deserves a metric shit ton of criticism for playing Sorenson in coverage as much as he did and to a lesser extent still does.

Exactly! I think a lot of people are forgetting how bad they were early in this season. It will be interesting to see how they do next week against the Cowboys. I don't expect them to shut down that offense, but a few stops would be nice.

Didn't the Cowboys offense make the Broncos defense look like the 85 Bears last week?

Ah. I'd be interested to see how many total snaps those guys got. Sorensen and Niemann no longer being starters doesn't necessarily mean Spags won't be up to his old tricks and finding ways to give those turds 50%+ of the defensive snaps.