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The Las Vegas Raiders stumbled in Week 2 in Buffalo, falling to the Bills 38-10 suffering their first loss of the season.
After defeating the Denver Broncos last week, Las Vegas seemed outmatched in many facets of the game on Sunday.
“That’s my responsibility,” head coach Josh McDaniels said. “I’ve got to do a better job and get our football team to do more things right if we’re going to compete against teams like this in this type of environment.”
While their overall body of work wasn’t good enough Sunday, things got off on the right foot. Less than three minutes into the game, quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo found receiver Davante Adams for a 16-yard touchdown to cap off the Raiders’ opening drive.
Adams would finish the day with six catches for 84 yards with that lone score.
After that trip to the end zone, the Raiders were left looking for answers to the Bills’ offensive attack.
Former Raider Latavius Murray scored later in the first quarter to tie things up before quarterback Josh Allen threw two second-quarter touchdowns to give Buffalo a 21-10 lead at the half. Buffalo would hold Las Vegas scoreless in the second half and pour on 17 more points to cruise to a home win.
A big reason for Buffalo’s defensive success was shutting down Las Vegas’ run game.
Running back Josh Jacobs was held to negative two yards on nine carries. It was the first time a reigning NFL rushing leader was held to negative yardage in a game since the 1970 merger.
“Once you lose control of the line of scrimmage it’s difficult to have control of the game,” McDaniels said. “It’s not a good way to play on the road.”
That loss of control played out as expected, hampering the Raiders’ passing attack after the first drive.
Garoppolo finished the game with 185 yards and two interceptions alongside his scoring strike to Adams. Forty-five of his yards came on that first drive alone, along with over half of the rushing output on the day.
“I thought we got off to a good start,” Garoppolo said. “We just didn’t sustain it. It starts with myself, I just made way too many mistakes.”
McDaniels echoed Garoppolo’s words on not sustaining the momentum built from the first drive.
“Momentum is just a word, McDaniels said. “You need to play well and coach well for 60 minutes. You can't just live off the momentum of a drive.”
Las Vegas will hope for things to improve next week should they receive positive news on the injury front.
Last week’s leading receiver Jakobi Meyers missed the Week 2 matchup with Buffalo due to a concussion and his injection into the lineup can take some much-needed pressure off Adams.
The Raiders will finally get to play in front of a home crowd next week, with their home opener set for 5:20 p.m. PT on NBC’s Sunday Night Football against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Pittsburgh lost its opener to San Francisco 30-7 and will face the Cleveland Browns on Monday Night Football in Week 2.
Las Vegas still sits in a decent spot early in the season at 1-1 and will seek to correct the mistakes that led to their Week 2 demise.
“A lot of work to do, and a lot of lessons to learn,” McDaniels said. “We’ll be hard at work at that obviously this week.”