New play caller Greg Olson ‘crushed it’ as Raiders ride fast start to cruise past Broncos

Even with the Raiders starting this season out 3-0, they were plagued by slow starts. Those slow starts would jump up and bite them as they lost two straight games to the Chargers and Bears.

Those first five games extended a streak by the Raiders of 11 straight games in which they failed to score on their opening drive dating back to week 11 of the 2020 season.

Then Jon Gruden resigned. And that streak ended.

Gruden was calling all the plays during his time as head coach, while Greg Olson was more of a strategist as the offensive coordinator. But with Gruden out, Olson stepped into the play calling duties. And the offense came to life.

Not only did the scoreless open drive streak end, the slow starts were also put to bed soundly. The Raiders drove for a touchdown on their opening drive. Then they drove for field goals on their next two drives. The second of which, Daniel Carlson missed off the right upright.

That didn’t trip them up, though. In the second quarter, Carr threw a gorgeous, perfect pass right into the arms of Kenyan Drake for a 31-yard statement touchdown as the first half ended.

It extended the Raiders lead to 17-7, making for just the second time this season they had the lead at the half. The other time was when they held a 9-7 lead over the Steelers at the half of their week two game.

How the Raiders were able to start the season 3-0 was by finishing games strong. But there was no simple flip of strong start vs strong finish in this one. The Raiders simply kept it going, matching their first half with another 17 points in the second half. Starting with Drake scoring again, this time on the ground from 18 yards out.

Prior to this game, Drake hadn’t scored a touchdown. He had two in this game with a season-high 73 total yards.

“He just kind of really just made everything a little simpler,” Drake said Olson’s offense. “We didn’t come into the week with a lot of dropbacks, a lot of different things like that. We just reduced the amount of things that we had to worry about. We just went out there and played ball. But other than that, it’s the same offense. It’s not going to really change. Got the same quarterback, the same playmakers on that side of the ball.”

That second TD by Drake was set up by 29-yard screen play to Josh Jacobs. Screen plays aren’t often that exciting, but we haven’t seen them much in this offense. This one was called perfectly and execute with equal perfection. The Broncos brought the house, the Raiders line let the through and Jacobs had a convoy. Two plays later, paydirt.

By the end of the third quarter, the Raiders had scored 31 points, which was the most points they have scored in regulation all season. The offense was working like a well-oiled machine. Something it hadn’t done much of over the past couple weeks.

“I thought he was great,” Carr said of Olson. “I thought he had a great flow of the game. His communication, his tone in the headset. There’s so many little things that matter, especially for quarterbacks. He was getting the plays into me so early, so that I have time at the line of scrimmage either to go fast, or I can push the tempo or I can trick them. We had an offsides because I can push the tempo and get the guys where I need to get them, stuff like that. It was very smooth.”

Then with a fourth quarter field goal, they put the game away while making this their highest scoring game of the season, including their two overtime wins. And Carr went over 300 yards passing (341) for the first time in three weeks.

After the game, interim head coach Rich Bisaccia seemed to downplay how dominant the offense was in the first game without Gruden, suggesting it was at least in part to the Denver defense’s inability to game plan for Olson.

“Advantage to us is this is the first game Oly has called in a while, so they really didn’t have…they were trying to figure out what we were going to do,” Bisaccia said. “I’ve been with Oly before where he’s called every play. And it was collective. I thought we ran the ball better, so I thought we had a little more play action look to us today. And we moved Derek out of the pocket a little bit. Offensively those guys did a great job with that. It was fun to watch. Oly did a great job.”

Yeah, there was more play action and more of other things that make the offense more unpredictable and thus more dynamic. Quite the concept.

All in all, Olson took the baton and ran with it as Raiders play caller. And in a difficult situation to be certain.

“For everything that he had to deal with this week, and then being thrust into calling plays for the first time in a while, I thought he crushed it, honestly,” Carr said of Olson. “I thought he was great. His demeanor on the sideline, all that, he was awesome.”