Eleven yards. That is the combined distance of the three touchdown passes Kirk Cousins threw in New Orleans on Sunday, and the Raiders are 3-0.
Kirk Cousins is very happy to have Brock Bowers back.
— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) September 28, 2026
🎙️: @Amanda_Balionis pic.twitter.com/wMNTyXiTj3
I keep waiting for the part where it goes wrong. It has not come yet. Las Vegas went into the Caesars Superdome, fell eleven points behind in the third quarter, and then scored the last nineteen points of the game to win 35-27 (NFL.com). Two road wins in three weeks, and the one Raiders team I have any memory of would have folded in that third quarter without much argument.
"The Las Vegas Raiders look legit..
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) September 28, 2026
Kirk Cousins is getting the ball out so quickly and Brock Bowers is unbelievable" ~ @danorlovsky7 #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/EE34YMOmFT
How the game went
The Saints were the better team for long stretches and still lost. They outgained the Raiders 381 yards to 340. They also put the ball on the floor repeatedly, losing three fumbles and throwing an interception, and in a game this tight that was the whole difference.
| Quarter | Raiders | Saints |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 | 3 | 6 |
| Q2 | 13 | 7 |
| Q3 | 6 | 14 |
| Q4 | 13 | 0 |
| Final | 35 | 27 |
Here is how the points actually went up.
| Qtr | Time | Scoring play | Score (LV-NO) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | 7:35 | Raiders: Gay 41-yard field goal | 3-0 |
| Q1 | 0:50 | Saints: Juwan Johnson 2-yard touchdown catch (kick blocked) | 3-6 |
| Q2 | 11:27 | Raiders: Gay 37-yard field goal | 6-6 |
| Q2 | 5:46 | Raiders: Michael Mayer 3-yard touchdown catch | 13-6 |
| Q2 | 1:54 | Saints: Noah Fant 3-yard touchdown catch | 13-13 |
| Q2 | 0:00 | Raiders: Gay 25-yard field goal | 16-13 |
| Q3 | 6:40 | Saints: Juwan Johnson 1-yard touchdown catch | 16-20 |
| Q3 | 5:46 | Saints: Noah Fant 16-yard touchdown catch | 16-27 |
| Q3 | 3:20 | Raiders: Washington 36-yard touchdown run (conversion failed) | 22-27 |
| Q4 | 9:21 | Raiders: Cody White 4-yard touchdown catch (conversion failed) | 28-27 |
| Q4 | 6:22 | Raiders: Brock Bowers 4-yard touchdown catch | 35-27 |
Two rows there say “conversion failed”, which is worth a quick word if you are new to this. After a touchdown, worth six points, a team gets one more attempt at the end zone: an easy kick for one point, or a harder play from close range for two. Twice the Raiders came away with nothing, which is why those scores jump by six rather than seven or eight. How scoring works has the full set.
Look again at who caught the touchdowns. Juwan Johnson, Noah Fant, Michael Mayer, Brock Bowers: all four are tight ends, the hybrid position that blocks like a lineman and catches like a receiver. Six of the eight touchdowns in this game were caught by tight ends, which I had to count twice to believe. NBC Sports reported that it ties an NFL record last matched in a Chargers-Raiders game in 1981, though I could not find that one confirmed anywhere else, so take the record with a pinch of salt and the six with none at all.
Eleven yards, and what it says about throwing
Cousins finished 22 of 33 for 248 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions, for a passer rating of 119.3. His longest completion of the whole afternoon gained 22 yards, and that figure includes whatever the receiver added after catching it.
A “deep ball” is usually counted as a throw travelling twenty or more yards through the air before anybody touches it. On Sunday, Cousins barely attempted one. He averaged 7.5 yards per attempt, which is a healthy number, and he got there in small, quick pieces rather than in chunks.
This is the bit that took me a while to understand, and it is why I am writing a proper piece on throwing soon. A quarterback who cannot or will not throw deep is not automatically a limited quarterback. On the Just Win Raiders Podcast, film analyst Ted Nguyen and former NFL offensive lineman Marshall Newhouse spent a good while on this, and made the point that the deliberately wasted throw is a veteran skill rather than a mistake:
“Sometimes when you see a quarterback skip a ball to a receiver ten, twelve yards out, you think, oh, he threw it low, bad mechanics, whatever. No. He’s like, as soon as I actually pull the trigger, I see that DB has too much of a jump. This is going to be a pick. It’s not worth it. I’m going to throw it near his feet.”
They counted several of those on Sunday. That is the same afternoon Cousins finished with zero interceptions, against a Saints quarterback who threw four touchdowns and still lost partly because of one. A throw into the dirt looks like a failure and is frequently a decision. If you want the numbers that do and do not capture this, QB stats, decoded lays them out.
The fumble that decided it, and the rule behind it
EarEarly in the fourth quarter, with the Raiders trailing, Malcolm Koonce hit Saints quarterback Tyler Shough as he went to throw. The ball came loose, Maxx Crosby recovered, and the officials ruled a fumble. New Orleans thought it was an incomplete pass. The ruling was reviewed and it stood.
Shough was clear about what he felt: “I thought I threw it. Me, personally, I thought my arm was going forward.”
The rule that decides this is Rule 8, Section 1, Article 1 of the NFL rulebook:
“When a player is in control of the ball and is attempting to pass it forward, any intentional forward movement of his hand starts a forward pass.”
The word carrying the weight is control. It is not enough for the arm to be travelling forward. The passer has to still have the ball under control at the moment it does, otherwise there is no pass for the forward movement to start. Mark Butterworth, the NFL’s Vice President of Instant Replay, explained the decision in exactly those terms: “All we are looking for is the hand coming forward with control to make it an incomplete pass. In the play that happened today, the hand was not coming forward with control of the ball.”
Now the part that made me laugh out loud, because the same rule carries on:
“If, after an intentional forward movement of his hand, the passer loses possession of the ball during an attempt to bring it back toward his body, it is a fumble.”
That clause is the exact reverse of the old Tuck Rule, which said such a play was an incomplete pass, and which produced the most infamous call in Raiders history: a snowy January 2002 play-off game in New England, Tom Brady’s apparent fumble ruled not a fumble, and the Raiders’ season finished. The league scrapped the tuck rule in March 2013. Twenty-four years after it cost them, a Raiders defender knocks a ball loose in almost the same argument and the modern wording sends it the other way.
I am not going to pretend that is anything other than delicious. For how a review like this actually works, replay and challenges covers it, and the rules glossary has fumble, forced fumble and recovery separated out, which is a distinction I got wrong myself two weeks ago.
The takes
Brock Bowers played his first game of the season after knee surgery and caught ten passes for 116 yards and a touchdown. On the Just Win Raiders Podcast, Nguyen and Newhouse reckoned that was maybe eighty per cent of him, and their more interesting observation was how often Bowers lined up wide, out at receiver rather than beside the line, beating cornerbacks on third down by simply being stronger than them.
"This is the toughest cover in the NFL right now."
— Move The Sticks Podcast (@MTSPodOmaha) September 28, 2026
Brock Bowers was unbelievable against the Saints. Big season incoming.#Raiders #RaiderNation pic.twitter.com/mK1DeOZHR5
How about 38-year-old Kirk Cousins?
— Grant Paulsen (@GrantPaulsen) September 28, 2026
He’s leading the NFL with 9 TD passes and has the Raiders (3-14 a year ago) off to a 3-0 start. pic.twitter.com/ikISLDIj7I
Chris Bumbaca of USA TODAY put the surprise plainly, given the Raiders won three games in the whole of last season, and he was fair enough to flag that the officiating went their way more than once on the comeback. Both those things are true at the same time, and a team that wins ugly in September has still won.
There was a cost, too. Jack Bech, whose first career touchdown was the best moment of my Week 1, left with a broken forearm and is heading for injured reserve.
What a 3-0 start has meant before
This is the fourteenth 3-0 start in Raiders history, and only the second since 2002. Here is every one of the previous thirteen and where the season finished.
| Year | Final record | How it ended |
|---|---|---|
| 1967 | 13-1 | Lost Super Bowl II |
| 1968 | 12-2 | Lost Championship |
| 1969 | 12-1-1 | Lost Championship |
| 1975 | 11-3 | Lost Championship |
| 1976 | 13-1 | Won Super Bowl XI |
| 1977 | 11-3 | Lost Championship |
| 1982 | 8-1 | Lost Divisional round |
| 1983 | 12-4 | Won Super Bowl XVIII |
| 1984 | 11-5 | Lost Wild Card |
| 1987 | 5-10 | Missed the play-offs |
| 1990 | 12-4 | Lost Championship |
| 2002 | 11-5 | Lost Super Bowl XXXVII |
| 2021 | 10-7 | Lost Wild Card |
Twelve of those thirteen reached the postseason. Two became Super Bowl wins.
Before anyone frames that, read the small print, because two of those rows are barely seasons at all. The single failure, 1987, was the players’ strike year: one week was cancelled outright and three were played by replacement teams, so the third win of that 3-0 start came with stand-in players on the field. The Raiders then lost seven in a row. And 1982 was strike-shortened so severely that the 3-0 start ran across Weeks 1, 2 and 11. It took two months to finish.
Three of the thirteen, 1967 to 1969, came in the American Football League, before it merged with the NFL in 1970. And five of the thirteen ended in a Championship game defeat, which is its own particular kind of September promise. A 3-0 start is a strong signal. It has never once been a guarantee.
Where the Raiders sit now
| AFC West | Record |
|---|---|
| Kansas City Chiefs | 3-0 |
| Las Vegas Raiders | 3-0 |
| Denver Broncos | 1-1 |
| Los Angeles Chargers | 0-3 |
Level at the top, and the table is about to sort itself out in the most direct way available. If you want to know what a fast start is actually worth by January, the NFL play-offs and seeding explains where a record gets you, and the AFC and NFC covers why the division matters most of all.
The rest of the league
Week 3 had plenty going on beyond this one, and I have written all of it up in the full Week 3 roundup across the league.
Kansas City, Sunday
For three weeks I have written some version of the same sentence: the division runs through Kansas City until somebody knocks them off it. On Sunday the Raiders get to try, at home, with both teams 3-0 and the Chiefs on their seventh unbeaten start under Andy Reid.
Kick-off is 9.25pm on Sunday evening for those of us watching in the UK, which is a far kinder hour than this sport usually offers. If you have picked up this season new and want to know why a Raiders fan spends the week before this fixture in a mild state of dread, I have written the history properly: Chiefs vs Raiders, decoded.
Bring it on.