The Raiders’ run game problem is a run defense problem

This was not a fun watch, after the last 3 games, I was not very motivated to get this review done.

But when I listened to coach Kubiak say “We’re not going to run the ball until we stop the run. Until you make the game competitive” when asked on Sunday why his offense keeps failing to run the ball. I found myself happy we have Klint Kubiak as coach, but also wanted to get my review done!

What did Coach Kubiak mean?

A team that is 22 points down at half-time does not get to run the ball, because running takes time and a team that far behind has none. The run game is not broken independently. It is downstream.

Before we jump in, last week I said that our takeaways were doing the work, so if they came back and the yardage stayed where it was, nothing had actually been fixed. We saw this clearly, as Las Vegas took the ball away twice, the most since Week 3, and the Rams ran for 199 yards and won by fourteen regardless. Nothing has been fixed.

Raiders Live | HC Klint Kubiak | 10.26.26 https://t.co/HfSC0UqAtn

— Las Vegas Raiders (@Raiders) October 26, 2026

Raiders vs Rams: How the game went

Rams 35, Raiders 21 at Allegiant Stadium, a fourth straight defeat, and 28-6 at half-time before a fourth quarter that made the final score look closer than the afternoon was.

It started with a decision worth knowing about. Kubiak won the coin toss and took the ball, rather than deferring, which is the usual choice and means handing the opponent the first possession in exchange for taking the first one of the second half.

He did it to attack a third-quarter problem the Raiders have had all season, which was discussed by the guys on Raiders Roundtable. They went three and out. The intent was right and the result was nothing, which is roughly the story of the whole afternoon.

Third down is where a game like this is actually lost. The Raiders converted three of fourteen, the Rams five of ten. A conversion is simply gaining enough yards to be given a fresh set of four attempts, and a team that fails eleven of them hands the ball back eleven times. If the downs system is new to you, downs explained covers it in a couple of minutes

The red zone was worse, perhaps not as bad for us as Kansas City this weekend but bad enough. Inside the opponent’s twenty, the Rams scored touchdowns on all five trips and the Raiders on one of five.

Las Vegas now converts 46.4% of its red zone visits, fourth-lowest in the league, while sitting in the top ten for getting there at all. Matt Gay, 17 from 19 on field goals, has been quietly turning stalled drives into three points all season, which flatters the offense and masks the problem.

Raiders vs Rams: The number, in both directions

Read the Net column down the page. One positive number, in Week 1, and then six games of being out-rushed, four of them by more than a hundred yards. Across the season the Raiders have run for 523 yards and allowed 1,005, which is close to twice as many.

The league ranks put numbers on how unusual that is. Las Vegas allows 143.6 rushing yards a game, third-most in the NFL, and 5.0 yards every time somebody runs at them, second-most (Raiders.com).

At the other end, 523 rushing yards puts the offense in the league’s bottom five, and they have not passed 100 in a game since New Orleans in Week 3. Ashton Jeanty averaged 1.9 yards a carry on Sunday.

Next Gen Stats had the Rams converting 60% of their runs into successful plays, their own season high and the fourth-best rushing day any team has had this season. That is the thing Kubiak was pointing at. Defense decoded covers why stopping the run is the job the rest of a defense is built on top of.

The numbers say what is happening. Kirk Morrison, a former NFL linebacker and a Raiders leading tackler for several seasons, explained on the club’s own Raiders Roundtable why it keeps happening. Teams are inserting an extra blocker, usually a second tight end, into the line before the snap.

The Raiders over-pursue towards where the run appears to be going, and that opens a cutback lane behind them, which is the runner’s chance to plant and go back against the flow into the space the defense has just vacated.

Morrison was careful about what he was not saying: this is not an undisciplined defense, it is one whose assignments are going unfilled and whose edge is being set too softly. His word for the fix was “correctable”, which is a more useful verdict than any of the angry ones.

Raiders Monthly Tracker: Seven games, four seasons

This is where the four-straight-losses “feeling” meets the data, and the two do not agree.

Across the four defeats the Raiders have conceded an average of 35.8 points a game, and four opponents in a row have scored 30 or more (Raiders Roundtable).

Both of those check out against the game logs: 30, 45, 33 and 35. Stretch it to five games and every opponent since New Orleans has scored at least 27, which is a not great.

Four columns in that table are the best of the four seasons, and not by a little.

Points scored: 26.1 a game.

The three seasons before this one managed 16.0, 17.7 and 14.7. This offense puts up roughly ten points a game more than last year’s did. Ten points is the difference between being beaten and being in the game at the end of it.

Takeaways: 12.

A takeaway is the defense winning the ball back by force instead of waiting to be given it, either by catching a pass meant for the other team or by recovering the ball when a player drops it. Twelve in seven games is more than double any of the other three seasons, which managed 5, 3 and 7.

Turnover margin: +4.

That is takeaways minus the number of times the Raiders have handed the ball over themselves. A positive number means they are winning that exchange. The last three seasons sat at -10, -13 and -5 at this stage, so this is the first time in four years the Raiders have been on the right side of it.

Points difference: -14.

Every point scored across the seven games, minus every point conceded. The Raiders are 14 points underwater. At the same stage, the last three teams were 49, 59 and 77 points underwater. Those sides were not losing tight games, they were being taken apart.

Then there is the fifth column, and it goes the other way. The Raiders are giving up 143.6 rushing yards a game, meaning yards the opposition gains by running the ball rather than throwing it.

The three seasons before this one gave up 129.0, 136.7 and 103.4. The team that won three games all last season stopped the run 40 yards a game better than this one does.

So the season has not collapsed. One column has got worse while four have got better, and the one that got worse is the one that decides whether a team gets to play the way it wants to. Which is what Kubiak said in a single sentence on Sunday.

Raiders vs Rams: Highlights and takes

The NFL posted the fake punt, which was the most fun the Raiders had all day. A fake punt is exactly what it sounds like: the team lines up to kick the ball away on fourth down, then runs a play instead. This one was a throw, by the punter, AJ Cole, for the second completion of his career (Raiders Roundtable). It also explains an oddity in the box score, where the Raiders are credited with seven more passing yards than Kirk Cousins threw for. Special teams decoded covers why the units that take the field for kicks are a third of the game newcomers mostly ignore.

Sanjit T. posted in the second quarter, at 21-3, that the defense was pathetic. I include it because it is what the timeline actually sounded like on Sunday, and because the fourth quarter did not change many minds.

Holy shit this is pathetic. The Raiders defense gives up another TD. They go down 21-3.

— Sanjit T. (@Sanjit__T) October 25, 2026

Mitchell Renz went further on Monday, with a video arguing it is time to talk about trading players after four straight losses. His frustration is aimed squarely at the defensive coaching. The table above says something more specific than the thumbnail does: this defense takes the ball away more than any Raiders defense in four years and stops the run worse than any of them. Those are different problems with different fixes, and only one of them is costing games right now.

THE ROB LEONARD DEFENSE SUCKS! Raiders Overreaction Monday after 4 straight losses. The @Raiders were CIRCUS on Sunday & it’s time to talk about trading players… @ChatSports https://t.co/979WMFucnj

— Mitchell Renz (@MitchellRenz365) October 26, 2026

Maxx Crosby went to the same place, speaking on The Rush Podcast two days after the game: “We couldn’t stop the run and didn’t play the game we wanted to. We’ve been through worse and it sucks, trust me, it makes me wanna throw up. We’re gonna get better and I know we’re gonna respond.”

He is the best player on this defense and he could have pointed anywhere. The offense, the injuries, the run of opponents. He pointed at the run, and he said “we”.

And “we’ve been through worse” is not a man talking himself round. You can see it in tracker table above. Minus 49, minus 59 and minus 77 at this stage in the three seasons before this one, against minus 14 now. Crosby played in all three of them, which is probably why he can tell the difference between a bad month and a bad team.

I personally hope all the talk of trade around him is just that, talk.

Maxx Crosby on the Rams loss “We couldn’t stop the run & didn’t play the game we wanted to. We’ve been through worse & it sucks, trust me, It makes me wanna throw up. We’re gonna get better and I know we’re gonna respond” https://t.co/IO1jfUl8XI

— ShifftttyyyQB1✞🏴‍☠️ (@raiders1022) October 27, 2026

And Adam Schefter reported that Kubiak has confirmed Kirk Cousins as the starting quarterback, with the line “There is no controversy.” That settles the question I raised last week about Fernando Mendoza, at least for the Jets on Sunday.

Raiders coach Klint Kubiak said the team is evaluating everything, including looking toward the future by starting No. 1 pick Fernando Mendoza over Kirk Cousins. Story via @ryanmcfadden_: https://t.co/XIKediKHw8

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) October 26, 2026

Cousins answered it himself, and better: “If I’m not the best option, then I don’t want to be out there either. I want our football team to have the best chance to win games”reported the Raiders Roundtable. He leads the NFL in touchdown passes. The case for changing quarterback has never really been about him.

The Raiders standings

Third, and bottom of the division on points difference other than the winless Chargers. But look at the points-scored column behind that table: 183, which is more than Kansas City’s 143 and more than Denver’s 144.

The Raiders have scored more points than anybody in the AFC West and have the third-best record in it, which is the whole argument of this piece sitting in a standings table.

If the way a 3-4 record turns into a January place is still fuzzy, play-offs and seeding is the page for it, and it is worth reading before writing this season off on a record alone.

The rest of the league had its own week, and I have written it up in the full Week 7 roundup.

My thoughts after week 7

I keep seeing this described as last season happening again, and the data isn’t quite backing it.

The 2025 team scored fourteen points a game and was beaten by eleven. This one scores twenty-six and is beaten by two. Those are not the same season, whatever the two records look like side by side.

What they do share is one column, he rushing numbers. If the rushing number comes down, a team that already scores and already takes the ball away starts winning the games it is currently losing by a touchdown.

If it does not, the rest stops mattering, because a defense that cannot stop the run never lets its own offense on the field for long enough to matter.

I said last week I liked the coach and thought he should be given time. Nothing on Sunday changed that.

He was asked about his offense and answered about his defense, and on seven games of evidence he is fixing them in the right order.