4 Reasons the Oakland Raiders can go undefeated in September
By Steve Rivera
With the Oakland Raiders about to play their final season in the East Bay, they will open their 2019 campaign with an opportunity to get out to a 4-0 start.
The Oakland Raiders won’t be picked to win the AFC West as either a favorite or a dark horse. That’s a reasonable prediction as on paper, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers look to be the better team. I get that, and most fans do.
However, it’s also hard to say with absolute certainty that they will finish in the basement. In a division that seems almost too easy to predict, the Raiders have an opportunity to get out of the gate fast.
Oakland will open with two divisional games at home against the Denver Broncos and Kansas City, then play two on the road against the Minnesota Vikings and Indianapolis Colts.
With the exception of maybe the Chiefs, you have three very beatable team’s. Denver has a question mark in a quarterback well past his prime. The Vikings have a signal caller who doesn’t scare anybody, and the Colts need to work hard to keep Andrew Luck upright.
The Raiders, by comparison, will be a little better than just competitive in 2019. Quarterback Derek Carr now has a full season with Jon Gruden, and that’s a good thing. He also has perhaps the best wide receiver in the NFL with Antonio Brown. The run game looks to be improved, and their defensive backfield shouldn’t be the disappointment it was last season.
Of those first four games, the Chiefs present the biggest obstacle to a perfect 4-0. That said, Patrick Mahomes has a tall task in duplicating his monster 2018 season.
A fast start in Oakland opens up all sorts of possibilities, leading to some magic perhaps, for one last season in the East Bay.