How did Oakland really win?

good d by oaktown witout a dout, i think the d line had donovan siked out a little bit, o-line looked a tad better, but not by mutch, where is the run block? we need fargas to be able to break one open. j-russ hits miller so mutch because thats all he has time for. over all oakland played a hell of a game. we were just better than them on this past sunday, hopefully they will keep it up…….. go RAIDERS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Although it can be said that Mcnabb didn’t have his normal, successful day or that Ackers missed kicks that he normally makes, just remember, “That’s why you play the games”!
Otherwise it would be very easy to pre-write the entire NFL season and just let the best team on paper, win the super bowl.
But we don’t. The games are played, and the important thing to understand is that with every week, no matter who the game is against, is the opportunity to change it up, make adjustments, and change the outcome.
The reason Donovon didn’t have “his usual game” was mainly due to the Raider defense being changed by Coach Marshall, from what had become the expected norm, and as a result, Donovan Mcnabb was removed from his comfort zone and deposited on his ass! Suddenly, when your team is counting on you to score the only possible points, it might become a little bit more difficult to kick those easy field goals that Ackers usually makes with no problem.
Combine that with a few more hits on offense and a little bit of ball control could have always been achieved but was just missed in previous games, and that’s what being close to winning is all about!
So whatever the remainder of the season has in store, one thing is for sure. Teams will have to respect us and prepare for more than just “A scrimmage” when they play the Raiders!

i believe the defense won it for us, even tho the offense looked a lil bit better we still need to be more consistent and russell needs to stop throwing ints.but our oline did show improvement..bay needs to get more involved and props to murphy for those blocks..i was loosing hope on the raiders but this win just got my hopes up haha..
go raidassss!!

It definitely won us the game. The offense only scored 13 points despite racking up the yardage. The special teams were pretty good despite the lack of a return game. At the end of the day, it was the defense. Only the Saints, coming in, averaged more points a game than the Eagles.

Use less man coverage, play the zone more, blitz the quarterback and watch what happens. Rattle the rookie next week and, dare I say, we’re 3-4.

Even though football is a pretty over-the-top contact sport, what seperates the mediocre team and the GREAT team who have GREAT coaching is their understanding of tactics and strategy.

The way to defeat an opponent is in this order:

1st Choice: Defeat the opponent’s plan
2nd Choice: Defeat the opponent’s strategy
3rd (worst) Choice: Defeat the opponents direct attack

Why is this???

When you defeat an opponent’s plan you are basically beating the other team BEFORE the ball has snapped. The symptom of a opponent who has been beaten before the snap is CONFUSION. You can see this when a defense shows blitz then doesn’t blitz, then show no blitz then sends in 8. The left side is overloaded then at the last moment right side is overloaded. And it doesn’t take much confusion to blow-up an offensive play – you get missed blocking assignments, sacks, and rushed throws (for incompletions).

When you can’t defeat a plan then your next resort is just to quickly read the opponent’s strategy and make counter-adjustments to it on-the-fly. This is a BIG step down from the first choice but with good talent this can be effective.

The worst tactical choice is to try to win by defeating an opponent’s their DIRECT attack. This is playing “reactive”. This is akin to playing a “vanilla” defense that is easily decoded and then try to “react” to the opponents attack. This might work in high school and maybe in college but in the pro’s a good opposing offense (plus and decent quarterback) will almost always beat you.

So, this is why the best defenses will do their all to cause trouble (cause confusion) on the offense’s side of the line of scrimmage.

So… What did the Raider’s do right on defense??? They defeated the Eagle’s offensive game plan by neutralizing McNab by confusing him and their coaches. They mixed up blitzes with overloads with man coverage with different zone coverages. For most of the game the Eagles could not consistently PLAN what to do.

For the Oakland defense, the lesson to take from this victory is that they MUST stay “unknowable”. This means that when the opposing team scouts our defense, they cannot reliably predict what the defense might do. And hopefully this leaves the opposing team to just guessing. Which is no plan.