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Raiders’ swagger has Super Bowl look to it
OAKLAND — What happens to Derek Carr and the Raiders when they’re trailing, things look bad, and somebody — oh, let’s say the Buffalo Bills — looks ready to pound the Raiders to the ground?
Something changes. The alarm sounds. Everybody dressed in Silver & Black takes a deep breath.
Then another dramatic thing happens: Carr turns into the MVP of the league.
Really, that’s when the Raiders become the new Raiders, the swaggering, dynamic,
super team that can take down anybody from any situation and just did it again to Buffalo, turning a 24-9 third-quarter deficit into a 38-24 final score in one mad flurry Sunday at the Coliseum.
They don’t get scared, they actually get calmer. They don’t give up, they actually turn into their rampaging real selves.
“We don’t really dwell too much on the score, like ‘we’re down 15, we need this,’ ” receiver Michael Crabtree said after catching 7 passes for 74 yards and a touchdown. “We don’t panic, we don’t sweat. We go out there and play ball.” This is an offense that can score from anywhere on the field, a defense that can patch things together, and a team that has won six games in a row.
This is the version of the Raiders that can get to a Super Bowl — this coming Super Bowl — and win it.
OK, yes, they also have that tendency to start slowly, to get behind, to give up a lot of points, and to need furious comebacks.
And, no, that is not the ideal formula for playoff football, matched against the best teams in the league.
But Carr and the Raiders have more second-half punching power than anybody in the game, and have proven it against New Orleans, Baltimore, Tampa Bay, Houston, Carolina … and now Buffalo.
It’s dramatic and hectic, and it’s beautiful for them … when they win, and lately all the Raiders do is win.
“Yeah, by any means,” Crabtree said, echoing Khalil Mack’s slogan for this season. “We say that all the time.
I think that’s going to be our quote from now on — by any means.
“I don’t care if it’s ugly, pretty. By any means we’re going to make it happen and end up with the ‘W’.”
These exhilarating performances also could be pushing Carr toward the MVP nod, as he piles up the statistics and comeback victories.
On Sunday, a week after dislocating his right pinkie, Carr wore a white bandage and a small splint, stayed strictly in shotgun formation, and generally threw exactly as he has all season, on his way to two TD passes — his 23rd and 24th of the season — both in the second half, course.
And in the third quarter, he got going and nothing could stop him.
I asked Carr, a huge basketball fan, if this felt at all like a big run by the Warriors, and he joked that maybe it was more like his team the Lakers.
“They go on those runs, man, that’s kind of what it felt like, when you’re scoring points and the defense’s making stops,” Carr said, more seriously. “Lucky for me, I only have to do it on one end.
“It felt good, man. It did have that feel to it, like a basketball game. I’m just thankful we won.”
According to ESPN, when trailing in the second half or in overtime Carr has thrown 13 touchdowns this season … and zero interceptions.
Do you think anybody, even New England, is very eager to deal with this kind of firepower?
On Sunday, the Raiders looked woozy and overmatched deep into the third quarter against the Bills, who moved the ball at will and slowed down Carr and the Raiders’ offense.
Until Carr raced the Raiders downfield on a 75-yard touchdown drive, culminating on a 3-yard score to Crabtree, and then everything changed.
The Raiders defense suddenly rose up to shut down the Bills the rest of the way — forcing three consecutive three-andouts before Khalil Mack forced consecutive turnovers — and in a blink, the Raiders route was on.
“Too bad it took ’til the second half to get stuff going,” tackle Donald Penn said. “But when it gets going like that, we know we’re hard to beat.”
The Raiders scored 29 consecutive points — four frantic touchdowns and a two-point conversion — in less than 12 minutes of action from late in the third quarter to midway through the fourth, and it seemed like it took about 20 seconds, really.
Call it an 11th-round knockout victory, when they were behind on all the cards, and it lifted the Raiders to 10-2 and kept them atop the AFC West heading into Thursday night’s big game in Kansas City.
“You can feel it — December is what you remember,” guard Kelechi Osemele said. “This is the time of the year the wins are really important. So the sense of the urgency and the intensity in the games pick up and it’s just a lot of fun to be a part of.
“We’re going to have a lot of fun here because we’re playing for something.”
This Raiders team seems to know exactly when they have to go the fastest, and they know that when they go fast, they can take down anybody, at any time, and they might sprint all the way to the biggest game of all.