The Raiders MUST DOMINATE The Panthers In *CRUCIAL* Home Opener

Baker Mayfield, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Tyson Bajent, Andy Dalton. Do those names sound familiar to you? Because to any Raider fan who's been watching over the last three years, those are the names of quarterbacks we have lost to going into games we were favored in. Two of those quarterbacks started the games on the bench, got pulled into the games midway through, and shocked the world and won. The Raiders are the only team capable of losing to a team with an interim head coach or a quarterback who was not named their starter for week one of the regular season. And now, after coming off what was one of the bigger wins in recent memory, save for a couple Kansas City Chiefs games, the Las Vegas Raiders have their home opener against the Carolina Panthers. And it is not Bryce Young who is starting, but it is Andy Dalton, a player in which we have never beat him. The most recent time we played him, he was on the New Orleans Saints, and we didn't cross the 50-yard line until the fourth quarter. And I know what you're thinking, a week three home opener against one of the worst teams in the league. How could this be one of the most important games in recent memory? Well, I'm here to tell you. And make sure we're hitting that sub button. About 70% of the people who are watching this video are not yet subscribed to the channel, but they keep coming back for more. We're so close to 9,000. Let's get that final push to 9,000. Hit that sub button. Every single time we gain a little bit of steam or a little bit of momentum in a specific season, every time we start to believe that we are turning a corner, we lose to teams that are not as good as us, led by quarterbacks like Baker Mayfield, when he was still not good, or Ryan Fitzpatrick, or Tyson Bajut, or Andy Dalton. These are the games that the Raiders find a way to lose no matter what. And Antonio Pierce has been selling us a bill of goods throughout all of training camp, throughout the whole offseason, and we've seen it come to fruition in this Ravens game. And none of us think that that game was a fluke. We think we are closer to the team that we were in the second half of the Ravens game rather than what we were the first five and a half quarters of the regular season. But if we do not come out here and impose our will right off the bat to a team that is owing to one of the worst offenses in the league, now starting a 30-something quarterback who hasn't played meaningful football in a long, long time. If we don't come in there and punch them in the mouth, it's going to be the same old Raiders. I'm not going to come in here and tell you after that game, if we lose it, it's okay, it's only one game. No. I am tired of making a mockery of a situation like this by being the team that always loses to an interim head coach or an interim quarterback. And the time is now to finally see if we've turned the corner to be able to win games we're supposed to win. Now look, you are going to lose some games that you are favored in, no doubt about it. You cannot lose games where the quarterback was benched a week before you're going to play them, and the team thus far has scored 10 points and 3 points. You cannot lose that game, especially coming off a win you just had, especially because it's the home opener. These are all ingredients for a classic Raiders letdown. And we've seen it time and time again. It didn't matter if Derek Carr was our quarterback, John Gruden was our coach, Josh McDaniels, Jimmy Garoppolo, doesn't matter. These are games we lose. However, I feel differently about this. One because it's so obvious, right? It just feels so obvious that we could drop this game, that maybe that's going to work in our favor and it's not actually going to happen. And the second reason I believe this is because usually in games where we play a backup quarterback or an interim head coach, we have a bad defense. All those games I listed were before this new era of defense. We had Patrick Graham and Max Crosby for the Tyson-Bajan game and for the Baker-Mayfield game, but we were not yet the defense that we have now. We didn't have players like Jack Jones and J'Corey Bennett and Christian Wilkins. We didn't have Spillane taking people's heads off like he is now. So that's the first reason I believe that this game is going to go the way it should be rather than the way it might always go in the past. Another reason I believe in this team is because I am deciding to put all my eggs in the Antonio Pierce basket. And this is coming off a regime in Josh McDaniels and Dave Ziegler where I was all in. And look, if I disagree with who Mark Davis hires, I'll be the first person to tell you. But I was one of the people that said Josh McDaniels is going to learn from his mistakes and he's going to be able to coach this team to a Super Bowl. Boy was I wrong! And now Antonio Pierce has taken over and last year we saw what he did. And he made some great changes and he gave us that spark. But we needed to see if that spark was going to last past the interim tag. Once it was removed, this defense has been balling harder than ever before. And now we're going to find out if the offense clicking at the end of that Ravens game was us finally figuring out how to utilize our weapons or was it just a flash in the pan. Because right now I'm telling you this, if this game is close going into the fourth quarter, I'm not going to be happy. I do not care what the final score of this game is if it's close going into the fourth. Obviously a win's a win and you're going to try to stack them. And we have a bunch of winnable games on the schedule. But these are games you have to win if you want to make a statement and make the playoffs. We say all this, oh we're getting overlooked, we're getting overlooked. The media doesn't talk about us, it's bad Ravens, it's bad Ravens. Well this is a time to shut everybody up. You go in here to Vegas, you play Carolina and you beat them by 30. And then what's the media going to say? Because when the Saints beat the Panthers by 30, now the Saints are the best team in the league. We beat the Panthers by 30 with Andy Dolan, who seems to be a better quarterback than Bryce Young, the reason he's starting. Now what's the media going to say? We have an opportunity to change the minds of people who perceive the Raiders to be a joke. Because right now nobody outside the people rooting for the team that bleed silver and black really trust the Raiders. And there's even some Raider fans that don't trust the Raiders. I don't know if I fully trust them after that Ravens game. We were dead to rights for three and a half quarters and then woke up. Are we still awake? Or is it going to be classic Raiders? Because when we go to the end of the season and we miss the playoffs by one game and it's because we lost to the Carolina Panthers, I'm going to lose my mind. Just think about if we beat Tyson Bajun last year, we would have nine wins instead of eight. There are so many variables that go into making the playoffs and the biggest one is having to beat teams that you need to beat. This is why it's one of the most important games in a long time. We're going to see if this regime is a regime that can get players ready when they might not always be. Because you know Max and Devontae are going to be ready. But do they have guys in the locker room like Spillane and Jack Jones? Are they going to be ready? Everything's shown us that they should be, that they want to be, but will they be? We got to win this game. It's extremely imperative and important. Gardner Mitchell's got to keep continuing to push the ball down the field. We got to pass it 40 times to win football games. Pass it 40 times. We got to show a little bit of a run game here and we got to be able to protect. This is a get right game for the things that we've not been getting right so far. It's not going to be a get right game for the Panthers. And they're going to come out here with their heads on fire. They're going to try as hard as they can to win this game after this quarterback change. Because I'm sure they bought into whatever the coach is selling. And he's shown that he wants to win. And they're going to come out here like we did against the Giants. So we need to be ready to absorb the body blows and return them in an orderly fashion. We put our foot on their throat and we do not let up until they are dead. This is how the Raiders play football. And that's what Antonio Pierce has been selling us this whole time. And we finally saw it a little bit in the Ravens game. Are we going to continue to do that? Comment below your thoughts. Join that Discord. Link is in the description below. It's a free group chat where we're all talking all the time. All Raiders. Join the Patreon, patreon.com slash allaboardraiders for only $5 a month. You get your name at the end of the credits. Exclusive content. Ad-free videos. You get videos like this early. But if you can't do that, that's okay. You're doing just enough by watching and subscribing. Please be sure to subscribe. It's free. I throw no tricks to you. I love you guys and I'll see you next time.