The Las Vegas Raiders are now 2-0, and their game in New Orleans is now something of a trap game.
The Las Vegas Raiders are 2-0 and sitting atop the AFC West along with the Kansas City Chiefs, which wasn’t how this part of their season was supposed to go. The early forecasts had the Raiders winning in Week 1 against the Miami Dophins, which happened, then losing to the Los Angeles Chargers, which didn’t.
It’s a shocking early development, especially given the brand of football the Raiders are putting on the field so far under new coach Klint Kubiak. They’re playing solid, disciplined football, which is the opposite of what we saw last year under former coach Pete Carroll.
Now the Raiders have a road game they were given a chance to win in the forecasts, with the New Orleans Saints expected to be somewhere in the neighborhood of mediocre or awful. That turns this contest into something of a trap game for the Raiders given what typically happens to a lot of surprise 2-0 teams at this time of year.
Coach Klint Kubiak is already trying to head this off at the pass in his comments leading up to the game, saying “no team has ever made the playoffs going 2-0,” per a report from Myles Simmons of Pro Football Talk. Kubiak knows how this works, as it’s happened to nearly every team in the league at one point.
But the NFL is a volatile game from week to week, and emotions play a huge role. One of the most common themes is that teams that get confident usually get taken down a peg or two, especially at this point in the season.
Another development related to this is the possible return of tight end Brock Bowers. Kubiak has teased this for weeks now, with the most common phrases being “day-to-day” and “very close.” But we don’t have any history of being able to trust these kinds of comments from the new coach, and his bland, oblique messaging is keeping up from building one.
None of this matters, of course, when it comes to the product on the field. What does matter is that the Saints aren’t pushovers -- far from it, in fact. They’re 1-1 against the Detroit Lions and Baltimore Ravens, and that’s arguably as impressive as what the Raiders have done, perhaps even more so.
The Saints also have a quarterback who can play in Tyler Shough. New Orleans won six games last season, and Shough went 5-4 after being installed as the starter. That’s reason enough to think this might be a trap game, and Simmons called it the “sneaky good” game in this week's schedule that should be a fun watch and tell us a lot more about who the Raiders are really going to be this season.
