Lightning strike: Raiders can’t catch Bolts after slow start

The Las Vegas Raiders have started slowly in three of their four games this season, falling down by two touchdowns in three of them.

But a postponed kickoff due to a lightning threat in a roofed stadium?

Coach Jon Gruden and the Raiders faced the Los Angeles Chargers on Monday night, and it was a new source of lateness for them.

“It was almost as if I didn’t know what was going on.” Hunter Renfrow, the receiver, inquired. “After all, aren’t we under a dome?” If you polled everyone in here, I’m sure no one would have predicted a lightning delay. We wouldn’t have come out and performed the way we did in the first half if they hadn’t responded better than we did.”

After the lightning threat in the Southland passed, the Raiders (3-1) still battled to catch up when they finally got on the SoFi Stadium field.

They trailed 7-0 after Los Angeles’ first drive, and they were down 21-0 at halftime after managing just 51 yards of offense — the Raiders’ lowest first half since Gruden’s return in 2018 — offset by 53 yards in penalties.

Two long scoring drives to start the third quarter weren’t enough to prevent Las Vegas from their first loss of the season, a 28-14 loss to their AFC West opponents.

The Raiders were unable to prevent the Chargers from securing a comfortable victory, despite the fact that they had already won two games in overtime this season.

Derek Carr, who had a season-low 196 yards passing and two touchdowns, said, “Hopefully this wakes us up a little bit.” “If I’m being honest, I believe we need to get started much sooner. We had a wonderful start to the season, but we aren’t starting games nearly well enough yet.”

In the first half of this season, the Raiders have been outscored 56-31, including 28-5 in the opening quarter. Those figures are concerning, but Gruden was particularly alarmed by the team’s poor start, which he described as “crazy.”

Renfrow produced one of the best heads-up plays in recent NFL history late in the first quarter when he smelled out a fake punt and rushed up from his position as the returner to blow up a ball from Ty Long to Tevaughn Campbell.

“We had some outrageous penalties,” Gruden remarked. “In the passing game, we gave up some plays that you can’t give up. In the first half, we didn’t play well…. We fought back and placed ourselves in a position to pull off a stunning comeback tonight. We just didn’t make the right decisions.”

The Raiders’ first 3-0 start since 2002 came to an end at SoFi Stadium in front of thousands of silver-and-black-clad fans from the Los Angeles area. The Raiders’ fans had a lot to cheer about in the third quarter, but the Chargers’ fans had a lot more to cheer about outside of that.