The Oakland Raiders showed up with nothing on Sunday afternoon in their road loss to the New York Jets at the Meadowlands, getting crushed 34-3. Head coach Jon Gruden described “fatigue” as a factor in the defeat.
Per Levi Damien in USA Today Sports' Raiders Wire:
“We had four straight games go down to the last play of the game,” said Gruden. “… The team’s fighting hard. I think sometimes fatigue might be a problem. You know the six-hour flight, we were delayed two hours getting in, three-hour time change, East Coast kickoff at 1:00 was hard when I coached a veteran Raiders team years ago.
“We are not a lot of experienced people when it comes to rain and cold. And I’m not making any excuses, but hopefully, that got our attention, and it makes us better as we prepare for one of the best teams in football in another cold, nasty place.
“I’m not a genius. I’m not Thomas Edison. I don’t know how to do that,” Gruden said of preparing his team for playing in bad weather. “You know, we just gotta show pictures of people that are cold that deal with cold (laughs) I don’t know. We’re not going to overanalyze it, we did not play our best football.”
Despite the change of scenery traveling to the East Coast, Gruden's Raiders also had to deal with wet weather in New Jersey against the Jets. However, to be fair, so did the Jets, who had no issues as second-year quarterback Sam Darnold threw for 315 passing yards and two touchdowns while rushing for another score.
Raiders quarterback Derek Carr, meanwhile, was 15/27 on the day with no touchdowns and an interception. Carr was eventually benched towards the end of the blowout for backup Mike Glennon.
Sunday's loss came off of three consecutive wins for Gruden's Raiders, all of which were within a one-touchdown margin of victory.
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