Las Vegas beat Miami by two touchdowns, and our model moved the Raiders up a win without changing what they are
Updated
The Raiders won their opener 27-13 over Miami without Brock Bowers, and it looked the way a Las Vegas win is supposed to look. Kirk Cousins threw three touchdowns on 160 yards, Ashton Jeanty ran for 102 in his debut, and Maxx Crosby and Kwity Paye combined for five sacks of a quarterback who is still trying to prove he belongs. When we re-ran the season with the result seeded in, Las Vegas climbed from six wins to nearly seven, a 7-10 finish with a playoff chance that moved from one percent to eight. That is progress. It is not a transformation, and the roster is still the fascinating study in imbalance we described in July.
The offense is the fun half, and it did its job. Cousins projects for 4,041 yards and 24 touchdowns against 16 interceptions behind a passer rating near 89, a slightly more conservative line than the summer run but a competent veteran season. Tre Tucker climbs to 97 catches for 1,154 yards as the top target. Brock Bowers, who sat out the opener after a knee procedure and could be back as soon as Week 2, holds at 72 catches, 794 yards and seven scores, still one of the best tight ends in football. Jalen Nailor adds 65 catches for 792 yards. And rookie Ashton Jeanty carries the ground game at 869 yards and six touchdowns with another 48 catches out of the backfield, the identity of this offense in his first season. The unit projects for 313 points, 26th in the league, which is a limited offense with three real weapons in it.
The defense is where the re-run tells a better story than the July preview did, and it deserves saying. In the summer we graded this unit dead last in the league and projected it to allow better than 400 points. After Week 1 our model has Las Vegas allowing 382 points, 23rd in the league, and generating more than 50 sacks, sixth in football. Crosby had two sacks against Miami and projects for 18, and Paye, who had three, saw his line jump from under seven sacks to 13 and a half. Two edges getting home changes everything behind them, and a secondary that looked hopeless in July looks merely thin when the quarterback has two seconds to throw.
That is the honest reason the number moved. Not the offense, which is roughly what we thought it was, but a pass rush that showed it can be a top-six unit rather than a one-man show. The back end is still the back end. Devin White, Elandon Roberts and Jamal Adams are still gone, and when we ran the rest of the season opponents still threw around Crosby and Paye and moved the ball. But a defense that ends drives with sacks is a defense that keeps shootouts close, and the Raiders won a few more of those in the re-run than they did in the summer.
The division is still the ceiling. Denver projects as the best title shot in the AFC. Kansas City slid to seven wins but has Mahomes twice. The Chargers lost to Arizona and dropped to eight. When we ran the rest of the season Las Vegas finished third in the West on average, ahead of a Chiefs team in decline and behind two clubs with more complete rosters. Seven wins in this division is a team laying a foundation rather than one competing for anything.
The market opened Las Vegas around six wins, and in July our model landed in the same place. Now we sit a win over it, a modest lean grounded in a pass rush that just proved it has two players rather than one. This is not a bold disagreement. It is the model and the market looking at the same rebuilding team and the model seeing one more win in the defensive front.
The path to more is the offense outrunning its grade. If Jeanty is an instant star, if Bowers and Tucker force defenses to account for both, and if Cousins keeps the interceptions down, Las Vegas could push toward eight wins and make noise. The path to less is the secondary collapsing against the better quarterbacks on the schedule, in which case the sack total becomes decoration and the Raiders slide back toward five. Both are live, and seven is the honest middle.
The next month is a reasonable test of the seven-win read. Las Vegas goes to the Chargers in Week 2 in a game between two teams our model now has within a win of each other, then to New Orleans against a passing game that just threw for 410 in Detroit, then hosts Kansas City and travels to New England. When we ran that stretch, the Raiders were an underdog in all four, with New England the closest, which is a 1-3 month on the projection and a 2-2 one if Bowers is back and Paye keeps getting home. Two wins against that slate would put Las Vegas at 3-2 entering October, which is a record the July projection never imagined and the September one thinks is possible.
So the read is a team that is more fun than good, with stars at the skill spots, a pass rush that is better than we thought, and a secondary that still needs a full rebuild. The Week 1 win was real and it counts. The record it points to is still a losing one. Enjoy Jeanty and Bowers, respect Crosby and Paye, and temper the expectations one notch less than you did in July.
