Raiders Use 17th Game (and Then Some) to Slide Into Postseason

Led by hard, slashing running from Josh Jacobs, who posted 132 yards and a touchdown, Las Vegas drove 46 yards into field-goal range. In that sequence, Jacobs rushed for a 7-yard gain, and the Chargers called a timeout, stopping the clock, to substitute a personnel package. Before that moment, the Raiders’ interim coach, Rich Bisaccia, said his team contemplated letting the clock drain to finish with a tie. But the timeout changed their approach.

“We were certainly talking about it on the sideline,” Bisaccia said.

On third-and-4 from the Chargers’ 39-yard line, Jacobs rushed for 10 yards, setting up Daniel Carlson’s 47-yard, walk-off field goal. As the ball sailed through the uprights, Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby threw his helmet and ran onto the field in excitement. Carr, who threw for 186 yards and two touchdowns, later pumped his hands as he walked off the field and hurled a game ball into the crowd.

The Raiders’ win gave them a coveted slot in the postseason. They face a road matchup against the fourth-seeded Cincinnati Bengals. But Las Vegas’s persistence, winning its final four games to advance to the postseason under an interim coach and with a shell of its season-opening roster, exemplified the possibility offered by a stretched out schedule.

The 2021 season was again dogged by coronavirus-related player absences, which resulted in cobbled together lineups and unexpected losses, and many of the league’s juggernauts — Patrick Mahomes’s flashy Kansas City offense, the Dallas Cowboys — suffered swoons that imperiled their standings. The added game gave those playoff-bound high seeds the opportunity to revert to form, perhaps none so much as the Raiders, who as late as mid-December were under .500.

“Every single week you got to be ready to go to be at your best,” said Crosby, who finished with six tackles and two sacks. His white arm sleeve and white pants were plastered with grass stains from Allegiant Stadium’s surface. “I love it, there’s nothing else I would want,” he said.

The playoff berth had seemed unlikely for the Raiders. The team’s head coach, Jon Gruden, resigned in October after The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported on racist and homophobic emails he sent from 2011 to 2018 when he was an ESPN analyst. Weeks later, the team released Henry Ruggs III, a first-round draft pick in 2020, after the receiver crashed his sports car into the vehicle of Tina Tintor, 23, killing her when her car burst into flames. Ruggs was charged with two felony counts of driving under the influence and two felony counts of reckless driving.

The team also released another 2020 draft pick, cornerback Damon Arnette, in November after he brandished a gun on social media and threatened to kill someone. Nate Hobbs, a cornerback, was also charged with driving under the influence, a misdemeanor, last week after he fell asleep in his vehicle at a parking garage.