Jack Del Rio disappointed by Raiders "embarrassing effort" vs Bengals

No one expected the Raiders to come out in their 2015 season opener as flat as they did. Least of all their new head coach, Jack Del Rio.

"Not the kind of performance we expected to have out there today," said Del Rio. "I thought our fans were excited about the opening of the season as we were and that's a very disappointing, embarrassing effort. I take full responsibility. We'll get it turned around and corrected."

The only facet of the Raiders performance on Sunday that Del Rio could say he was pleased with was special teams. The rest of it was just bad piled on top of bad as the Raiders could get nothing going on offense and couldn't make stops on defense.

"Offensively we said we've got to be able to run it, got to be able to protect our quarterback, got to be able to protect the ball, quarterback ended up being hurt, we didn't run it well enough and we didn't protect the ball; we were minus two in turnovers."

"Defensively we said nothing cheap. The tight end's still running wide open. And we said we were going to leverage and tackle; the first possession alone we had four leverage issues. So it just wasn't very good.

"Injury wise, we lost four guys... Nate [Allen] Allen had a knee (injuy), [Charles] Woodson had a shoulder (injury), [Derek] Carr had a hand (injury), and Jelly (Justin Ellis) had an ankle (injury)."

It really was as bad as Del Rio describes it. The Raiders were down 24-0 at halftime and down three starters in Allen, Carr, and Ellis. By the fourth quarter they were down 33-0 and late in the game saw Woodson be taken off with what looked to be a very painful shoulder injury. The only good news in this is that initial X-Rays to Carr's hand were negative.

Good news of any kind was hard to come by in this one. Former head coach Dennis Allen used to at least point out that his guys fought hard until the end. Del Rio doesn't see that as a positive worth shouting about.

"I don't believe in consolation prizes for us playing hard," Del Rio continued. "I expect us to play hard every snap. It wasn't good enough and we'll move on."

"Bottom line is you've got to sustain drives. Our overall on third down wasn't very good - 25%, 3 out of 12. I would bet that some of those came late. If you want to run the ball, you gotta be able to convert on third down and stay on the field. We just weren't able to get that going."

To be specific, two of the team's third down conversions were in the first quarter. Although, in the fourth quarter the offense converted two fourth downs on the way to the team's two late scores. Even the late scores were not something Del Rio was looking at as a positive, nor should he considering the Bengals just played out the win after taking a 33-0 lead.

The whole thing is an all too familiar scene for Raiders fans as they start yet another season having their excitement and anticipation fizzle out the gates.