The Las Vegas Raiders got their third win of the season against New Orleans as they capitalized on turnovers.
The New Orleans Saints lost a game to the Las Vegas Raiders that they probably should have won, but they beat themselves in the 35-27 contest and apparently aren't willing to admit it.
The Saints turned the ball over four times in the fourth quarter against Las Vegas, and one of those was a fumble by quarterback Tyler Shough where the latest version of the infamous old “tuck rule” coming into play.
The Saints said they didn’t understand the ruling, and they do have a point of sorts. As Katherine Terrell of ESPN pointed out, the Saints loss to the Detroit Lions included a critical play in which New Orleans edge rusher Chase Young sacked Lions quarterback Jared Goff and forced a fumble that was run back for a touchdown, but that call was overturned in the the Saints’ 31-30 loss.
Terrell noted that Shough appeared to have begun the throwing process when he was hit in the arm by defensive end Malcolm Koonce (Terrell misidentified him as a linebacker), and Koonce knocked the ball out of his hand and forced a fumble that was recovered by Koonce’s counterpart, Maxx Crosby.
Shough said “I thought I threw it,” but Mark Butterworth, the NFL’s vice president of instant replay, said via a pool report after the game that Shough “clearly lost control of the ball” before his hand came forward, hence the interpretation and the call.
It is somewhat true that calls on this kind of play continue to look like coin flips, but we’re burying the lede here. The Saints lost to the Raiders because they handed Las Vegas the game with four fourth-quarter turnovers, and another hit to Shough’s arm when he was throwing produced a wounded-duck throw in the same quarter that was picked off by cornerback Hezekiah Masses in a key turnover.
The Saints put themselves in a position to lose by playing bad football, and when you play bad football you’re often at risk for questionable decisions. New Orleans needs to look at the tape, then in the mirror, at which point they’ll see that they have no one to blame but themselves for this loss.
The Raiders didn’t set the world on fire for much of this game, but they didn’t beat themselves. Sometimes that’s enough to win, and that proved to be the case against New Orleans. Las Vegas probably doesn’t have enough talent to contend, but clean football and the ability to produce and capitalize on turnovers will win a lot of games in today’s NFL.
