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Sunday marks the beginning of a three-week reality test for the Raiders, and one of the people with the most riding on the outcome might spend all three games standing on the sideline wearing a headset.
Fernando Mendoza can afford to be patient for a little while longer. The question is how much longer the Raiders can afford to be patient with him, and the 49ers, Seahawks and Broncos, in that order, are about to have a considerable say in the matter.
At 4-4, the Raiders have earned the right to go to the Bay Area on Sunday with Kirk Cousins at quarterback and every intention of chasing a playoff spot. If that sounds like a modest accomplishment, think back to how many Novembers have been spent discussing where the Raiders might pick in April.
There is something to be said for beating the teams you ought to beat, especially for the Raiders. For years the surest way to get yourself in trouble was to look at their schedule, circle an opponent and confidently declare, “Well, that’s a win.”
By beating the teams they should, the Raiders have handled that part of the assignment and shown progress in the process.
They also played the Chiefs to within three points and did the same against the Bills. Both games were there to be won. Cashing in one more of those five trips to the red zone against Buffalo might lead to a different conversation about where the Raiders stand today.
Then again, anyone inclined to give them extra credit for those two Sundays ought to be willing to sit through the first half of the Rams game again.
It was 28-6 by halftime, and the most discouraging part was how little mystery there was to what the Rams were doing. They lined up and moved the Raiders wherever they wanted them. Two weeks earlier, the Patriots had exposed some of the same weaknesses in a 45-17 beating. Even in Sunday’s win over the Jets, the Raiders surrendered 140 rushing yards before halftime.
You can imagine what Kyle Shanahan thought when he got to that part of the film.
Beating the Jets bought the Raiders time to fix some of that. Now they have to do it against a 49ers team with the personnel to exploit just about any weakness that Shanahan can identify. Then come Seattle and Denver. By the time the Raiders get through those three games, we ought to have a pretty good idea how seriously to take their playoff chances.
Which brings us back to the kid in the headset.
The Raiders used the first pick in the draft on Mendoza, who won a Heisman Trophy and a national championship at Indiana. At some point, Klint Kubiak has to hand him the offense. The uncomfortable part for Cousins is how little that decision might ultimately have to do with how well he’s playing.
Cousins could play well enough to win Sunday and spend the final five minutes watching the 49ers run out the clock. That would say considerably more about the Raiders’ run defense than their quarterback. It would also leave them at 4-5, and nobody in the league office is handing out a half-game in the standings for getting let down by the other side of the ball.
Ideally, the Raiders get to 7-4, and Cousins takes the first snap against the beatable Browns with everybody wondering why we even bothered bringing this up. Anyone care to bet on a sweep of San Francisco, Seattle and Denver?
Two wins would do it. At 6-5, with the Browns and the Chargers, a team they’ve already beaten, up next, the Raiders would have a perfectly good reason to leave the keys with Cousins. He’d have helped them win two of their toughest games to date, too.
At 0-3, the call ought to be just as easy. At 4-7, asking Mendoza to spend another Sunday watching Cousins try to rescue a season that has gotten away from them would be wasting a Sunday they could spend getting him ready to win the next one.
It’s 1-2 that makes this interesting. At 5-6, those Browns and Chargers games would give Kubiak a reasonable argument for sticking with Cousins. The question would be what that one win looked like? Did the Raiders finally figure out how to get off the field on third down? Could they run the ball when everybody knew they had to? In other words, did they find something they could take into the following Sunday and reasonably expect to work again?
If they did, Cousins has a case. If the best argument for staying the course is that somebody did the math and the Raiders are technically still alive, the Raiders have to hand Mendoza the ball against the Browns.
The Raiders have earned three weeks to make that decision difficult. Starting Sunday, we get to see if they can.
