The Las Vegas Raiders are eliminated from the playoffs, so the team is simply playing for pride the rest of the season. Considering they still have three division rivalry games left, it should be easy to find motivation.
This week, the Raiders play the Los Angeles Chargers, but they’re going to be without an important player. The team announced that tight end Michael Mayer has been ruled out for the game due to an ankle injury.
Head coach Pete Carroll noted that Mayer is not “moving at all.” The ankle injury sounds serious, and could hold him out beyond this game. This is the latest frustration that Mayer has had to deal with. Since being a second-round pick in 2023, the Raiders have spoken very highly of him, but he hasn’t been that productive on the field. The team’s wide receiver corps is very weak, so Mayer has been starting alongside fellow tight end Brock Bowers. It’ll now be up to Bowers to take to lead the charge at tight end without the extra help.
Raiders Not Making Big Changes on Offense
Greg Olson is taking over playcalling duties from the recently fired Chip Kelly this week. It’s not a great time for him not to have a key weapon like Mayer.
The Raiders offense was a trainwreck under Kelly, but Olson acknowledged there’s not much he can do to change things in the middle of the season.
“Well, it’s difficult to change a whole lot, and anyone that goes into an offensive system, anyone, a quarterback would tell you, it’s oftentimes like learning a new language,” Olson told reporters on Thursday. “So, at this point, there’s not a lot that you would change in terms of how we’re calling things, terminology wise. But there are tweaks that you can make and certainly that we’re making to try and be more efficient, because we haven’t been efficient enough.
“At this point, with six games to go, we will make some tweaks, but there won’t be a lot of wholesale changes that you’ll see.”
Olson Wants Jeanty to Touch Ball More
One thing Olson will likely do differently from Kelly is not to abandon the run game early. He wants to get Ashton Jeanty the ball.
“Yeah, no question, and that’s part of the reason why we drafted him where we did,” Olson said. “Touches – whether it be the passing game or the run game, screen game, quick game. I think there’s a lot of things that he can do besides run the football.
“But how do you get the ball in your players’ hands, your best players’ hands? And he’s one of our best players, so we’ve got to find more ways to get him the ball.”
If the Raiders are going to move the ball on the ground, they need the offensive line to play better.
“When you look across the league, the successful teams are the teams that run the ball when they want to run it, not just to run it to maintain balance,” Olson said. “But we’ve got to get in the mindset of when we want to run the football, we’ll run the football, no matter what the situation or who we’re playing.
“A lot of people talk about balance, and certainly we’re looking for balance in the fourth quarter, but we’ve just got to get better at that part of what we’re doing.”
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