The Oakland Raiders defensive line was born when a piece of steel for was put into a ball with a strand of Chuck Norris' hair and then launched into the sun. They are manhandling the Denver Broncos offensive line. The Broncos have zero running room in this game, and Orton has little time to set his feet.
This has paved the way for the Raiders to take a 16-3 lead into halftime.
When Orton is able to get a pass off in rhythm he is finding some success. Luckily, that has seldom happened. Brandon Lloyd is proving to be a tough matchup for Chris Johnson. But this hasn't killed the Raiders since the Broncos have zero running game.
The Raiders are also helping their pass defense along by sending blitzes from their secondary. Orton took his share of shots in that game.
Offensively, the Raiders got to pounding the ball and they found some success. The offensive line is doing their job. The Raiders had 19 carries for 92 yards. And you can easily see them exploding for more in the second half.
The pass game failed to find much of a rhythm. Part of this is likely due to the monsoon type rains that swept through the second quarter. It also could be due to the fact that there has been a penalty on seemingly every other play.
Campbell finished the half 7/12 with just 33 yards.
The Raiders were inches away from turning in the play of the half from their own 2-yard line and Hue dialed up a deep pass to DHB. DHB came down with the ball, but Campbell put it too far to the outside.
The Raiders could easily be winning this game by a bigger margin. However, they stalled out near the endzone at the end of the first half.
The Broncos began to march down the field after the Raiders scored that field goal. It was the best their offense looked all half, but that drive was stopped when Orton mad an ill advised throw with the Raiders in a zone defense, and Matt Giordano made a great play on the ball and hauled in the pick.
That set the stage for Janikowski to boot a 63-yard field goal to close out the half. I think SeaBass' leg was in that bottle sent to the sun that gave birth to the D-line.
All in all, this was a solid half of Raider football in a sloppy game. There were way too many penalties by both teams. In all there were 16 penalties for 122 yards. One of the penalties came on a viscous face mask to McFadden. It wrenched his head back and he had to come out of the game. He returned later that series.