The Cincinnati Bengals dominated the Raiders from the very beginning of Sunday's 33-13 romping in the Black Hole. To an extent, this outcome isn't shocking—the Bengals have an established coaching staff and have had a consistently talented roster.
The Raiders, meanwhile, have neither of those things. Jack Del Rio is the third head coach in Oakland's last two seasons and has inherited a roster with an intriguing young nucleus of players, but not much else.
Those facts still don't excuse one of the Raiders' most disappointing performances in recent memory, though, and with that said, let's get to the details of what went wrong on Sunday.
1). Unimaginative Play-Calling Oakland's offense looks to be better than it has been in a long time, at least in terms of talent on the roster. But on Sunday, the players expected to make a splash for the Raiders did nothing of the sort—partly due to poor execution, but more so because of poor play-calling from offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave.
It was advertised all offseason that this team would be a run-first group on offense. Yet the Raiders started the game with a series of passes from Derek Carr that were off target and predictably aimed at Amari Cooper.
The inability to commit to the run made Oakland's offense far too predictable, and Cincy's talented defense capitalized. If you're going to go into panic mode after an early deficit—as the Raiders did—at least consider throwing the ball down field to get chunks of yardage. But they didn't, as Associated Press' Josh Dubow broke down in a recent tweet:
Out of 61 total plays for the Raiders offense, only 16 of them were runs. That is not the balanced attack Raider Nation was expecting to see from the team's offense in 2015. With Derek Carr...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Oakland Raiders
