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Paul Gutierrez, ESPN Staff Writer
BALTIMORE — After six-plus quarters of anemic offensive football — the Las Vegas Raiders had just 43 yards of total offense at halftime, with just 4 yards coming on the ground — Davante Adams had seen enough.
So the three-time first-team All-Pro receiver convened a spirited sideline meeting in hopes of jumpstarting the offense against the Baltimore Ravens.
“It got … not rowdy, but I had to speak up a little bit and use some voices just to get guys going,” Adams said. “Seeing everybody’s eyes, a switch flipped and it looked like … a different team. We can’t be a team where we’re just one dimensional and we’ve got the defense out there holding it down every single time.”
Message received.
Las Vegas, which trailed by 10 points with more than 10 minutes to play, rallied for a 26-23 victory to get its first win of the season. Indeed, the Raiders had lost 49 straight games when trailing by 10 or more points during the fourth quarter, dating to the 2016 season opener against the New Orleans Saints, according to ESPN Research.
Of course, the Raiders’ defense helped key the comeback as linebacker Robert Spillane intercepted Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson on a tipped ball in the middle of the third quarter. Spillane later tipped a Jackson pass to force a punt midway through the fourth quarter.
Then there was defensive end Maxx Crosby, who sacked Jackson twice. He celebrated the win with a hug of Raiders owner Mark Davis and a victory cigar and appreciated Adams’ recognition of the offense’s need to contribute.
“We have a real close locker room,” Crosby said. “They hear the noise; we hear the noise. But at the end of the day, it’s about responding, and those guys did it today. So I’m super happy for him. We’ve just got to keep stacking and make it a consistent thing.”
In the first half, Raiders quarterback Gardner Minshew was accurate but not really productive. He completed 14 of his 16 passes and managed only 64 yards through the air. And eight of his 14 completions were thrown at or behind the line of scrimmage as he averaged only 1.6 air yards per attempt, per ESPN Research.
In the second half, Minshew, who benefitted from a dubious facemask penalty, zeroed in on Adams, who drew a pair of timely pass interference penalties and had an acrobatic sideline toe-tap grab for a 30-yard pickup, and rookie tight end Brock Bowers.
Adams finished with nine catches on 12 targets for 110 yards and a 1-yard TD, while Bowers caught all nine of his targets for 98 yards. In a franchise that boasts Hall of Famers Fred Biletnikoff and Cliff Branch as a duo in the 1970s as well as Tim Brown and Jerry Rice in the early 2000s, Adams and Bowers became the first teammates in Raiders history to each have at least nine catches and 90 receiving yards in the same game.
And Minshew, who ended up completing 30 of 38 passes for 276 yards with a touchdown and an interception, became the first starting quarterback for the Raiders to win after being sacked five times in a game since Andrew Walter in Week 8 of the 2006 season against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“It felt great, man,” Minshew said. “Started getting Tae really involved. Brock started ballin’.
“That’s what it can be. And that’s our challenge — to be consistent with that. I look forward to continue to build on that momentum. I think everybody feels pretty great about it. There’s a ton of tape to clean up, [and] we’re going to do that, but I think everybody feels and believes what we can be as an offense.”
With a tip of the hat to the defense, of course.
After all, it kept the Raiders in the game in the first half and limited Jackson to 20 rushing yards, before a last-play 15-yard scramble. Up next, another mobile quarterback in the winless Carolina Panthers‘ Bryce Young.
“It don’t mean we’re going to win the Super Bowl because we did that,” Adams said. “But I think it means a lot in this locker room for us to dig deep, after not starting the way we wanted in the first game, let alone the first half.”
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