Raiders Week 8: A kickoff return did what the run game couldn’t

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alison b

The Raiders were out-rushed by 71 yards at MetLife, failed to reach 100 rushing yards for the fifth game in a row, gave up 166 on the ground, and won by five. Dylan Laube is a pretty big part of how we did it.

This was not the prettiest of wins, but boy did we need it. It was just what the doctor ordered. Did you know there is a really cool medical themed celebration you can do…

How Raiders week 8 game went

Raiders 38, Jets 33

Team Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Pts Yds Pass Rush TO
New York Jets61773334562901661
Las Vegas Raiders77141038342247950

MetLife Stadium, Sunday 1 November 2026. The Raiders trailed 23-14 at half-time and outscored the Jets 24-10 after the break. Yds = total yards, TO = turnovers committed. Sources: Fox Sports and Raiders.com.

The Raiders trailed by nine at the break and outscored the Jets 24-10 after it. The Jets did out-gain us by 114 yards and lost, which is the sort of sentence that usually means a stack of turnovers.

There was only one, and it came at the right end of the field: Jeremy Chinn’s interception in the end zone.

What did win the Raiders the game?

The there were three key things that I think led to us winning against the Jets.

Dylan Laube returned a kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown.

A kickoff return is the play that starts a half or follows a score: one team kicks the ball downfield, the other catches it and runs it back as far as they can, and almost always that is 25 or 30 yards and a whistle.

Taking one the whole way is rare enough that this was the first in the entire NFL this season, and the first by a Raider since Jacoby Ford in 2011.

Laube leads the league at 34.1 yards a return, and Next Gen Stats clocked him at 20.97 mph. This was not a one-off either.

Ted Nguyen and Marshall Newhouse noted on the Just Win podcast that the Raiders have been one of the league’s best return teams all season, and that Laube had gone close several times before one finally went the distance.

If kick and punt units are the part of the game you skip, special teams decoded is the page, and this is the week it earned its place.

Kirk Cousins scored four touchdowns

Three tthrough the air and one on a quarterback sneak, completing a season-best 73.1% of his passes for 247 yards without giving the ball away.

The third of them, a two-yard throw to Jalen Nailor with 11:33 left, put the Raiders in front for the first time since the opening quarter and made Nailor the eighth different player to catch a touchdown from Cousins this season.

It is Cousins’ first four-touchdown game since 2024, and he is only the third Raiders quarterback to reach 19 touchdown passes through eight games, after Daryle Lamonica in 1969 and Derek Carr in 2015.

Jeremy Chinn intercepted the pass that ended it

in the end zone, the team’s 13th takeaway of the season and tied third-most in the league.

A takeaway is the defense winning the ball back by force rather than waiting to be handed it, and it is the one thing this defense has done well all year.

And Brock Bowers did something no tight end has done

Seven catches, 92 yards, two touchdowns, and the highest offensive grade of any tight end in the league in Week 8 at 92.1, per Pro Football Focus.

He is now the first tight end in NFL history to gain at least 70 receiving yards in each of his first six games of a season, which is a stranger record than it sounds given he missed the first two games injured, so his season began in Week 3

Six of those seven catches came with him lined up outside rather than beside the offensive line, which is where a tight end normally lines up, and that ties the most by any tight end in a game since at least 2016.

That is the Raiders solving a problem by moving their best player somewhere he is not supposed to be.

The defensive performance did not change

Points scored and conceded, by week

Wk Opponent Res For Against Net
1Miami DolphinsW2713+14
2Los Angeles ChargersW2614+12
3New Orleans SaintsW3527+8
4Kansas City ChiefsL2730-3
5New England PatriotsL1745-28
6Buffalo BillsL3033-3
7Los Angeles RamsL2135-14
8New York JetsW3833+5
Season221230-9

Through Week 8, as of 3 November 2026. Green marks 30 or more scored, red 30 or more conceded. The Raiders have now scored 30 or more three times and conceded 30 or more five times. Sources: Raiders.com and Fox Sports.

The Jets ran for 166 yards. That is the fourth time in five games the Raiders have given up 165 or more on the ground, and the season figure is now 146.4 a game. Las Vegas managed 95 of their own, which is better than the 48 against the Rams and still under 100 for the fifth straight week. They have not passed 100 rushing yards in a game since New Orleans in Week 3.

So the diagnosis from last week stands, and the rest of the defensive line reads the same way. The Jets gained more than 440 yards, Geno Smith threw for 290, and Adonai Mitchell had a career day with 142 receiving yards.

The Jets gained more than 440 yards, Geno Smith threw for 290, and Adonai Mitchell had a career day with 142 receiving yards.

The mechanism is the same one described after the Rams game, by different people. Ted Nguyen and Marshall Newhouse put it on the Jets playing three tight ends, what coaches call 13 personnel, and running straight at the Raiders with the extra bodies, with Jets runners going untouched for two or three yards before anyone reached them.

Kirk Morrison called it an inserted blocker a fortnight ago. Both breakdowns land on the same root cause, a defensive tackle who can hold up against two men at once, and the Raiders do not have one. Defense decoded covers why that single position shapes everything behind it.

And here is the part that should temper the celebration. The Jets ran the ball 26 times with their running backs, and only four of those came in the second half, while they were still ahead. The Raiders did not stop the run on Sunday. The Jets stopped running.

The backfield changed hands, and it was planned

Ashton Jeanty had two carries for nine yards, a career low. Mike Washington Jr had 25 for 83, both career highs by a distance, having never carried more than nine times in a game before.

What that line leaves out is that Jeanty was busy anyway. He caught three passes for 64 yards, second on the team, including a 45-yard gain on the first play of the fourth quarter. So this was not a benching. It was a split: early-down carries to Washington, passing work to Jeanty.

It was also decided in advance. Jeanty said the reduced workload was “communicated” to him before kick-off, and that he did not know whether his own comments had caused it. Splitting a backfield by down, one runner on first and second and another on third, is a normal way to use two different players, and downs explained covers why those downs ask for different things.

Those comments, for anyone who missed the week: Jeanty said the Jets had “a couple of guys out there that don’t really want to tackle”, naming nobody. Demario Davis said “Yeah, saw it, heard it” and left it there. Minkah Fitzpatrick said he plays with “110% effort no matter who I’m playing against, no matter what they said”.

Klint Kubiak said the workload was his call and not a response to any of that. “Ashton is still going to be a big part of our team,” he said, and “he’s going to be a huge part of our run game going forward,” and on what happens next, “we just have to look at the film because we have two runners that we believe in”.

Not everyone is convinced, and nor entirely am I. Going from most of the touches to almost none is abrupt for a decision about form on its own.

But a coach can mean every word of that and still have made a point, and those two are not exclusive.

What matters more is that Washington has earned the early downs and Jeanty is dangerous with the ball in the air.

Jeanty’s own line was the right one: “We won. It doesn’t matter how I feel about how [many] times I get the ball”.

Week 8 in social posts

Two of them are worth your time for reasons that have nothing to do with analysis. I have already shared it up the article but here it is again!

Cousins marked a touchdown with a celebration mimicking the physio work on his elbow, which the broadcast called a wellness celebration, and the NFL posted it.

Then Kirko Chainz came back out on the flight home, for the second time this season. A 38-year-old quarterback in several kilograms of jewellery is not a tactical observation, but I just love how much these team seems to be a unit and having fun!

NFL+ posted the Bowers record, and these are the now infamous comments from Ashton Jeanty before the game:

Where they sit now

AFC West standings

RTeamMPWLPDPCTForm
1Denver Broncos862+70.750LWWLWWWW
2Kansas City Chiefs752+360.714WWWWWLL
3Las Vegas Raiders844-90.500WWWLLLLW
4Los Angeles Chargers707-760.000LLLLLLL

2026 season, after Week 8, as of 3 November. MP = matches played, PD = points difference, PCT = win percentage, form runs oldest to newest left to right. Kansas City took their bye in Week 5 and the Chargers in Week 7, so both have played one game fewer. Source: NFL.com.

4-4, and the schedule from here is the hard part rather than the easy part. If you want to know what a .500 record in early November is actually worth, play-offs and seeding is the page.

The rest of the league had its own week, and I have written it up in the full Week 8 roundup.

One win does not settle an argument

I have been making the case for a month that this team is better than its record, and a 4-4 team with 221 points and the division’s best scoring offense is the version of that argument I have been waiting to be able to make without caveats.

Except there is still a caveat, and it ran for 166 yards on Sunday. A win built on a 95-yard return and a goal-line interception is a win, banked and permanent.

It is also not a repeatable formula, because you cannot plan for a kickoff return touchdown and the Raiders have had precisely one since 2011.

What I would rather see in a fortnight is a boring one. Twenty carries that go somewhere, an opponent held under a hundred, and a win nobody has to explain.

But I wouldn’t be a Raiders fan if we were boring now would I.

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