It’s a black-and-blue Sunday for the Niners and Raiders
Oakland falls to Bears on last-second FG in Chicago while S.F. can’t find the end zone against the Packers.
CHICAGO — A supposedly hobbled quarterback wasn’t enough of an advantage for the Raiders.
Jay Cutler played through a hamstring injury that sidelined him a week earlier, and he was healthy enough to guide the Chicago Bears to a 22-20 win over the Raiders on Sunday at Soldier Field.
Robbie Gould booted a 49-yard field goal on the next-to-last play of the game to send the Raiders (2-2) to a crushing defeat after two consecutive wins. A series of laterals on the ensuing kickoff wasn’t enough to find the end zone, and Oakland was flagged for an illegal forward pass anyway.
“Real hard-fought, back-andforth game. Give them credit, they made the play at the end to win,” Raiders coach Jack Del Rio said.
The Raiders were looking for
their first three-game winning streak since 2011, which was also the last time they won consecutive road games. A win would have given them their best start to a season since opening 40 in 2002 and added more spice to next week’s visit from the AFC West rival Denver Broncos, the firstplace team in the division.
The reaction from the Raiders, however, was to brush this one off, come home and get back to work.
“It’s a loss,” wide receiver Michael Crabtree said. “It’s early. We’ve got 16 games. What’s all the fuss about? We’ve just got to go out there and win. Next week’s a divisional game. We’ve got to go out there and do what we’ve got to do.”
The Raiders got crucial defensive plays when they needed them the past two weeks, with Charles Woodson’s interception of Cleveland’s Josh McCown late in last week’s win and Neiko Thorpe doing the same to Baltimore’s Joe Flacco two weeks ago.
It looked like that trend might continue. Chicago (1-3) had a 19-17 lead when Raiders running back Latavius Murray fumbled a perfectly placed pitch — the second turnover he was involved in this game — and the Bears took over at the Raiders’ 42.
Chicago faced a thirdand-1 from the 23-yard line and tried to go deep to tight end Martellus Bennett, who had 11 catches for 83 yards and a touchdown. Woodson, three days shy of his 39th birthday, undercut the route and stepped in to make an interception.
The Raiders should have taken over at the 18-yard line but were backed up to the 9 when they received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for sideline interference.
That didn’t make a major difference after Derek Carr hit Crabtree, who had earlier left the game with an ankle injury, for a 25-yard pickup. Crabtree caught another 13-yard pass, and Roy Helu Jr., who replaced Murray after his fumble, ran for 12 yards.
Mychal Rivera caught a pass for 8 yards to get within Sebastian Janikowski’s field goal range, although four minutes still remained.
The Raiders kept it on the ground four straight times with Helu. The initial run picked up a first down, then he gained 8 yards on the next two runs. The third down was crucial as another first down could have run down the clock, but Helu was stuffed for a 1-yard loss.
“We felt like we were moving it pretty good and thought we had a better shot to move the sticks on that third-and-2,” Del Rio said. “We came up a little short there.”
Janikowski’s 41-yard field goal was good with 2:05 remaining, but the Bears still had two timeouts plus the two-minute warning.
The Raiders defense started out strong. Khalil Mack sacked Cutler on second down, and Cutler threw incomplete on third down. But he found Bennett for a 7-yard pickup on fourth-and-5 and continued moving down the field with a series of short passes.
With the wind at its back, Chicago had no problem settling for a 49-yard field goal that Gould nailed.
“We had an opportunity to end it on defense, and that’s where you want to be,” said defensive end Justin Tuck, who had his first sack of the season. “But they made a few more plays than we did in the end. You give them credit. That was a football team that obviously needed a win, was at home, and we just didn’t play well enough to get one on the road today.”
As for Cutler, who had been questionable and wasn’t certain to play until a couple of hours before kickoff, his hamstring didn’t seem to bother him a bit.
“I thought we were going to get the Cutler of old,” Tuck said. “He had two weeks to come back from that. He was pretty much the Cutler that was 100 percent, it looked like to me.”
Cutler threw for 281 yards and two touchdowns, and the Bears outgained Oakland 371-243. It was the Raiders’ lowest yardage output of the season. They were held to 246 yards in the season-opening loss to Cincinnati.
The Bears started the day 8 for 11 on third downs and finished the afternoon going 10 of 17.
“Not getting off the field on third down and turnovers,” Woodson said, “it’s hard to win games like that.”