Raiders Film Review: pass coverage remains a sore point for defense

During three quarters of Sunday's game against the Kansas City Chiefs and spooky quarterback Patrick Mahomes, the Raiders 'defense held the Chiefs' vaunted attack.

Oh, do you mean the second quarter? It's 15 minutes of football that Raiders fans would surely like to forget. The Chiefs scored 28 points in a quarter-game, losing Raider a significant advantage.

It seemed that Mahomes could not miss during those 15 minutes and lit the secondary Raiders for more than 200 yards, continually hitting deep blows at a pace closer to his studies at Texas Tech. How did it happen? For those of you who are fond of punishment (that 's someone who is a Raider fan for over a year), scroll down and find out.

Coverage breakdowns

Lamarcus Joyner commented after the match on the Raiders who must remain in the cover of the high men. Joyner expressed confidence in the defense's ability to stop being attacked while on cover.

The Raiders played a lot more security model matching concepts than the week before against Denver. It is harder to defeat these covers because the quarterback does not know which defender will take which receiver until the last second. But because of the complexity of the cover, it opens up to poor communication. Cue the first touched.

The legend should read "first touched". The Raiders defense plays a cover 4 game in which each DB will take a man-to-man receiver. Daryl Worley (who quickly converted to safety after Johnathan Abram's injury) takes the number 3 vertical.

The Chiefs signal to another potential receiver of the passing force and observe how each DB forces a man to consider the additional threat. All DB except Worley – who stays on the man he was keeping before the motion.

Although Cover 4 Match has its strengths and works on paper, it takes a lot of time to put everyone on the same page. It was Paul Guenther's fault to have called the cover while Worley was safe.

There was another riddle that came on the next drive. If you watched the game, you'll probably remember Sammy Watkins running alone in the middle for the first downhill. The clip below is the totality of the 22 sequences of this piece.

The Raiders are in one blanket, but are in blitz. The two internal linebackers line up in Guenther's famous Double A-Gap look and attack at Mahomes. The defensive end at the top of the screen falls to replace the linebackers in the cover. But there is still a huge hole in the blanket … so what happened?

The Raiders used an almost identical blitz in the first week against the Broncos. The two linebackers blitz the spaces A, two DBs fix the receiver at the top of the screen. But on this game, the two defensive ends fall in the cover. Without being in the defensive meeting room, it is impossible to say who is at fault. Maybe Joyner did not call the defense on her side. Maybe the only defensive tip that fell was supposed to go through the formation. Who knows? One thing is certain, no defensive system ever allows a slot receiver to operate freely, mistakenly, if someone is mistaken.

Technical breakdown

Cloakroom interviews after the match gave the impression that most of the defense issues were related to miscommunication. This is only half the story. Raider's defenders struggled to put the technique on film against Kansas City.

Take this representative from Gareon Conley. The Raiders are in the same cover of Match 4 which gave the first touchdown. This time, everyone has the same page and takes the right man. However, in the press coverage, Gareon Conley commits the capital sin of this technique: open his hips to allow free release of the WR.

Once Conley is out of phase and needs to catch up, he is at the mercy of Mahomes, who is able to throw the ball where and how he likes. Conley's neck injury may have prevented him from getting his head back into the room, but that does not excuse the mediocre technique of the press at the line of scrimmage.

Then there's our boyfriend Karl Joseph who was beaten by Travis Kelce in the press. **Pretends to be shocked ** As a person who watches a lot of Raiders movies, I do not remember one time. Joseph managed to cover a tight end near the goal line.

His technique does not help either. At the time of the shooting, Joseph steps outside, but gets on his heels. Try pushing anything in this position and see what happens, let alone an all Pro TE at 6 to 250lbs. Joseph is unbalanced when he tries his stuffing and curtains.

To take away

The cover and the pass go hand in hand. The defensive line did not help much and only managed to put pressure on Mahomes when the score went out of control.

Passersby were victims of the pass, whether they used human or zone concepts. According to my account, the Raiders gave up 263 yards (8.2 yards per attempt) while they were in a thick blanket. They also yielded 154 (9.6 yards per attempt) while they had two high security blankets. For reference, any yards per attempt on 7 is considered very good. So neither the cover was effective for the Raiders defense.

NOTE: The numbers above are an individual study and do not match the score of the box. All screen shots were not included in the reference to this article.