The Las Vegas Raiders gave Kansas City a battle, but some late mistakes proved costly.
The Las Vegas Raiders showed that they’re back all the way, but they fell short against the Kansas City Chiefs, 30-27, due to a late turnover, a questionable coaching decision and an inability to stop running back Kenneth Walker III.
The Raiders more than held their own early on. They scored first on a 4-play, 50-yard drive, with the drive featuring a big-play strike from quarterback Kirk Cousins to tight end Ian Thomas for the score.
The Chiefs came right back on a 2-yard pass from Patrick Mahomes to Tyquan Thornton, with the big play in that drive being a 41-yarder from Mahomes to Xavier Worthy.
The two teams swapped fiel goals in the second quarter, with the Raiders getting two and the Chiefs one. That made it 13-10 at the half, with coach Klint Kubiak declaring “we’re gonna win this game” as he left the field to head to the locker room.
But Kubiak took points off the board in a scoreless third quarter as he accepted a penalty after a field goal from kicker Matt Gay, and a fourth-down incompletion followed.
The fourth quarter was a track meet in which a total of 34 points were scored, with Kansas City getting the first touchdown on a 76-yard run by Walker followed by a two-yard TD strike to receiver Tyquan Thornton, who would later leave the game with a brutal ankle injury.
That made it 17-13, and a field goal by Gay brought the Raiders back to 17-16. Another field goal briefly gave the Raiders a 19-17 lead with just under five minutes left, but Mahomes led yet another drive that Walker finished off with a two-yard touchdown run to give KC a 23-19 lead after a failed two-point conversion attempt.
The next costly mistake from the Raiders was a subsequent fumble from return man Dareke Young that gave Kansas City the ball back, and a 22-yard run from Walker upped the Chiefs lead to 30-19.
The Raiders did manage a late drive that ended with a 20-yard TD toss from Cousing to tight end Brock Bowers from 20-yards out, and a two-point conversion made it 30-27. But the subsequent onside kick failed, and the Chiefs finally held against Cousins and company, with an inerception from safety Xavier Nwankpa snuffing out the final rally.
The Raiders have plenty of positives to take from this one, but they ultimately beat themselves, and they allowed Walker to become an unstoppable force after doing a decent job of containing him early. It will be interesting to see how they respond next week against the New England Patriots after their first taste of early-season adversity.
