Raiders end Oakland era with loss, another season without playoffs.
As it turns out, the only relevant thing about the Raiders’ final game of the 2019 season was the presence of the name “Oakland.”
“OAK” at the bottom of the TV screen alongside the score. “Oakland” on the lips of the game announcers and on the NFL Network’s Red
Zone channel.
Oakland. Oakland. Oakland. For the final time.
And it really was the final time because the improbable series of events required for the Raiders to sneak into a wildcard game, unsurprisingly, did not take place Sunday.
The Raiders were reliant on not only the outcomes of three different afternoon games, but on forging their own success. That last part has been the most challenging thing for the team to do ever since it returned to Oakland 25 seasons ago.
On Sunday, the Raiders were presented with an absurd path to the playoffs. Not any single outcome seemed impossible, but to have all four happen in synchronicity was highly unlikely.
Of the needed results, only Pittsburgh cooperated by losing to Baltimore. Jacksonville defeated Indianapolis. But all other outcomes were rendered moot because Tennessee, the one team that controlled its destiny and required no help, defeated the Texans to earn the final wildcard spot.
As for their own fate, for most of the game, the Raiders couldn’t take care of their own business. They stumbled, they bumbled, they were undisciplined and underwhelming. Yet they still had a chance to send the game into overtime with a late touchdown. Instead, Jon Gruden chose to go for two to win it and Derek Carr’s pass was batted down to seal the outcome. The Raiders lost 1615.
In many ways, it felt like a fitting, frustrating end to an era.
The Raiders finished the season 79. Only once in the past 17 seasons has Oakland finished with a winning record, and only four times in this return stint of a quarter century did the Raiders make the playoffs. So why would this final season be any different?
Instead of a thrilling surprise, Sunday’s game went like so many others. The first drive ended with a terrible throw by Carr into the end zone and then a missed fieldgoal attempt. On a subsequent drive, the Raiders went for it on 4thandinches, didn’t get the touchdown, Gruden challenged, the call was upheld, bringing his challenge record to 19 this season.
Add a controversial Denver fumble, a passinterference call and a couple of Oakland personal fouls, and social media lit up with “the officials are screwing us.” That trope surely will continue in Las Vegas, but this was a farewell complaintfest for Oakland.
On the field, the Raiders looked unhappy and unorganized. Up in a suite, television cameras showed Mark Davis looking content. The orchestrater of the Raiders’ relocation to Las Vegas, Davis is thrilled with the move. And he seems happy with his head coach, two years into a 10year, $100 million deal for Gruden and with just 11 wins to show for it.
It has been an empty and anticlimactic farewell for the Raiders: The standoff in the spring over where the team would play. The grudging return to the Coliseum. The tease of three straight home wins to bring the team to the brink of relevancy. And then the lateseason collapse. The Raiders lost five of their final six games.
Sunday’s loss marked the end of an era. The end of a brand. The end of a unique bond between city and team.
The fans have been there. They were there in the glory days. They were loyal when the team left in 1982. They were true for the 13 seasons in Los Angeles. They’ve been loyal through dark days, awful coaching, terrible draft choices. Through three years (20002002) of success. Through plummeting into near irrelevance. Through the small resurgence, the recent teardown. And even through this long and tortuous farewell.
Should the Raiders have even come back from Los Angeles? Should they have, instead, stayed in L.A. until some plan finally came together to build a real stadium?
Of course, they should have returned. Oakland is where they belong. They gave the fans a quarter century of community. Of great tailgating, of annual hope, of watching kids grow and babies born and something to root for every Sunday.
Even when it was frustrating, it was vital.
But, now, the Oakland Raiders are no more. And whatever the franchise is in the future, it will never be the same.