Barber: Gut-check time as Raiders fall to Chargers, 17-16

OAKLAND

This was the week it finally sank in: The Raiders are not a good football team. They could still become a good team; there is talent on this roster, and fortunes change quickly in the NFL. Until further notice, though, consider them substandard.

“Coach (Jack) Del Rio, he sums it up well,” left tackle Donald Penn said after the Raiders had fallen 17-16 to the San Diego Chargers on a last-second field goal. “I love the saying: ‘You get what you earn in this league.’ And what we earn right now? We earned four Ls right now. … And it don’t feel good.”

Penn is right, of course. The Raiders have now earned two Ws and 4 Ls for the year. The team that beat them Sunday at the Coliseum came into the game with just one W and 4 Ls. And it won’t get easier Thursday. The team that arrives here for a big primetime matchup, the Kansas City Chiefs, L’d for the first time on Sunday after starting with five impressive Ws.

The Raiders’ breakdown did not come out of the blue. They are currently on a four-game losing streak, their longest under Del Rio, and have failed in every variety of manner during the skid.

Until Sunday, though, there were handy excuses. The blowout loss at Washington was emphatic. But the Raiders, who were 2-0 before that game, could chalk it up as an anomaly, that one inexplicable faceplant every good team suffers. Then starting quarterback Derek Carr hurt his back against the Broncos, and Oakland was forced to play a game and a half with its second stringer, E.J. Manuel.

With Carr healthy enough to start and the Raiders’ backs against the wall, everything would be different. Except it wasn’t. The offense never got into any sustained rhythm against the Chargers, the defense gave out late in the game when it really needed a big stop and kicker Giorgio Tavecchio missed an extra point that could have tilted the result.

This time, the Raiders and their fans got salty.

As soon as Nick Novak’s 32-yard field goal sailed through the uprights as time expired, a guy sitting below the press box window shouted “(Bleep) you, Mark Davis!” It was an odd time for such an exclamation. Davis certainly earned some expletives from Raider Nation when he announced he was moving the franchise to Las Vegas. But he’s one of the few people in the organization who hasn’t missed a tackle or dropped a pass in recent weeks.

As the last few players trickled from the field following the game, one of the Chargers - I couldn’t identify him, because his jersey was rolled up - flipped the bird at surly Raiders fans lining the tunnel to the locker rooms. Someone replied by throwing popcorn at him.

And the people who paid for the privilege of watching this loss weren’t the only ones who ended up salty. Some of the Raiders players did, too.

To be fair, they didn’t lash out or curse at anyone (though linebacker Bruce Irvin did brush off reporters with an “I have nothing to say”). This is a pretty solid locker room, and these guys received enough preseason accolades to know the world isn’t against them. But you could sense a change in their tenor after they had dropped to 2-4.

“(Shooot), we just getting our (butt) whupped,” running back Jalen Richard told me when I asked why the offense wasn’t clicking. “Same (stuff) I’ve been saying. We don’t even know what’s going wrong.”

Richard added: “Right now, we just getting whupped. Every team we’ve played has beaten us fair and square, wanted it more.”

The diminutive runner wasn’t the only Raider who sounded exasperated.

“We’re disappointed,” said Penn, the plainspoken left tackle. “We’re disappointed in ourselves. We’re a better team than what we’re showing. We’ve got to find a way to fight through these last-minute games and get a win. And it’s tough right now, man, I ain’t gonna lie. I’m pretty pissed off right now. I know all the guys are.”

To be honest, Del Rio reached the boiling point earlier than his players. He was pretty jut-jawed the previous week, when the Raiders had fallen to the Ravens 30-17 here. After that game, I had asked the coach if perhaps his team wasn’t ready at kickoff; Oakland was down 14-0 to Baltimore less than four minutes into the first quarter.

Del Rio had paused a full 13 seconds - he actually took the time to unscrew a water-bottle cap and take a drink before locking his eyes back on me - until answering, “Clearly not what we wanted there.”

By now, Del Rio’s players have emulated his mood. It has taken this long for reality to set in: The Raiders are in deep doo-doo.

Before the regular season began, it was generally agreed that nothing less than at least one postseason win would make the 2017 campaign a success. That feeling only accelerated after a crisp 2-0 start, especially when everybody’s team to beat, the Patriots, struggled out of the gate.

But now we see the truth, that the Raiders are filled with holes. Some of them we should have seen coming, like inconsistent coverage in the secondary. Others are utterly mysterious, and most of those involve the offense. The O-line, 80 percent unchanged from last year, isn’t as dominant. Carr, even before he fractured the transverse process in his back, was off the mark. And Amari Cooper, a flash of lightning in his first two NFL seasons, has gone quiet in his third.

The result of all that inefficiency is daunting. At 2-4, the Raiders are on the verge of losing their grip on the season. And here come the Chiefs, who have beaten Oakland five consecutive times and are sure to be ticked off after absorbing their first loss of the season Sunday. And after that, a pair of road trips.

Last year, the Raiders were 8-1 in games decided by seven points or fewer. So far this year, they’re 0-2. The magic appears to have run out.

Despite their aggravation, no one sounded ready to accept the tumble without a fight.

“Ain’t nobody desperate in here,” tight end Jared Cook said. “Ain’t nobody feeling sorry for us in this world, not even us. So we gotta pick it up by the bootstraps and do what we can to fix this thing.”

It’s gut-check time in Oakland. Already, an AFC West title seems fanciful. A couple more losses before December and the chances of making the playoffs will be receding, too. Sunday’s frustration was born of both confusion (about what, exactly, has gone wrong for the Raiders) and understanding (of where the situation stands now).

“We still have a lot of games to play,” cornerback T.J. Carrie said. “There’s no help coming. The cavalry is not coming. We are the cavalry.”

You can reach columnist Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.