The Raiders scored no points last Sunday in a bizarre 3-0 game. That was a big zippity-do-dah on their home field. That was odd enough, since it was the lowest scoring game of the past 15 years, but that’s an insignificant part of the strange goings-on.
The Raiders played another game at home on Thursday, giving them less time than usual to recover from their injuries and weariness. This time they broke their all-time franchise scoring record with 63 points against the Chargers. In other words, the Raiders had the fewest points in team history followed by the most points in team history, all within five days.
Eight different Raiders scored TDs in Thursday’s game, tying an NFL record. Wide receiver Jacobi “Law Firm” Meyers, threw a touchdown pass and caught another one. The Raiders led 42-0 at halftime, which was surprisingly not the biggest halftime curb-stomping in NFL history. I had to look that one up. I didn’t remember that New England led Tennessee 45-0 at halftime on a snow-shrouded Foxborough field in 2009.
(The Pats didn’t make it to 63 or more. They “only” won that game 59-0. They scored on the first series of the second half to make the score 52-0, whereupon Mr. Brady found a seat on the bench and tried to stay warm. Brady’s back-up that day was Brian Hoyer, who is still playing now, the NFL’s perennial “back-up to the stars.”)
I hope you didn’t have the Chargers’ defense in your fantasy league. They also set a franchise record, because they had never given up that many points before. Few teams have. The Raiders’ total was the second-highest number of points scored by a team in a single game since the AFL-NFL merger. (Oddly, the highest was also this year. The Dolphins scored 70 on ten TDs against the Broncos back in September.)
That’s not the end of the odd stuff. The Raiders managed to score 63 despite accumulating fewer than 400 yards of offense from scrimmage, only 52 more yards than their opponents (378-326). What’s more amazing is that the net total yardage (yards from scrimmage plus runback yardage on kicks, punts and interceptions) was actually in the Chargers favor! Moreover, the Raiders were so sluggish that they had to punt six times! (For reference, the Dolphins amassed more than 700 yards from scrimmage in their 70-point game, and only had to punt once.)
So how the hell can you score 63 when you have to punt the ball away six times? The Raiders dominated the turnover battle. They had five take-aways and no give-aways. The Chargers handed them the ball five times, and they obviously knew what to do with it.
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