KC Chiefs: What we learned about each team in AFC West after week 3

WHAT DID WE LEARN ABOUT THE RAIDERS?

Remember after week one when the Raiders stomped on the Broncos and in week two when they were beating the Chiefs for a quarter and we all thought “Wow, the Raiders might be good!”? Well, we realized that was silly after they got walloped by the Minnesota Vikings by a score of 34-14 on Sunday.

Derek Carr‘s numbers don’t look horrible, but the Raiders got behind early and he was forced to throw a lot more and did so on mostly short passes. He went 27 of 34 for 242 yards, two touchdowns, one pick, and was sacked four times in the blowout loss.

The run game couldn’t get going for Oakland, as rookie Josh Jacobs had just 44 yards on ten carries, but again, the Raiders were forced to air it out more once they got so far behind.

The highlight on offense for the black and silver was, without a doubt, tight end Darren Waller, who had 13 receptions for 134 yards. Waller has easily become Carr’s favorite target and it showed in this one, as the quarterback targeted his tight end 14 times and Waller grabbed all but one of them.

As for the defense, they weren’t as menacing as we thought they might have been. Kirk Cousins was held to under 200 yards passing, but he’s shown he’s not a very good quarterback this year after the Vikings paid him all that money over a year ago. The Raiders didn’t get any interceptions or sack Cousins.

The defense was destroyed on the ground, as the Vikings rushed for 211 yards on 38 carries with Dalvin Cook leading the way. Cook had 16 carries for 110 yards and a touchdown while rookie Alexander Mattison had 12 carries for 58 yards and a touchdown. Adam Thielen scored both a rushing and receiving touchdown.

This game kicked off a long slew of away games for the Raiders, as they’ll hit the road again next week for a date with the Colts in Indianapolis in the early slate of games.