What To Make Of The Raiders Final Preseason Game.

Boy do I have a story to tell you guys if you're wondering why I didn't post a video after the game last night or why I wasn't active in my discord which you should be in link in description below it's completely free. It's because the area where I live had a severe power outage 30 minutes before the game kicked off and didn't come back on until around three hours later and then the internet didn't turn on until about 30 minutes after that and then it turned off again and then turned back on so I was hot spotting my phone to my computer watching the game in the dark it was freezing the internet kicked back on I got rid of all the stuff that I was hot spotting then it kicked back off it was a little bit of a nightmare but we persevered we got to see essentially most of the game it was kind of a blur to me because again of all the stuff I was dealing with but it was a preseason game no big deal right I don't know some people are talking about this like it's the end of the world and look I've been doing this a long time this is year six of me making raider videos on the internet this is year 17 of me posting videos on the internet been doing this since I was 2009 so I understand the concept of rage bait I used to be a child I used to understand how fun it was to comment something negative and to see someone get angry at something I commented and you would think those people have gone on to grow up and have stopped trying to rage bait people but no some people don't grow up it's hard to decipher what is real legitimate concern about the wide receiver room or Mendoza or John Spytek versus just number one rage bait or number two people just being angry to be angry at something and then there's the flip side of that there's people that are pushing back hard against some of the rage bait pulling out like stats in the preseason comparing them to other people like none of this matters a couple years ago when Aidan O'Connell was starting I pulled up his first five games in the regular season that he ever started and compared it to some other rookie quarterbacks to show people this is what he looked like against someone like a Joe Burrow against someone like a Derek Carr I don't remember exactly who was in that list but it was showing that you can start this way and then become something else doesn't mean that he's going to be as good as Joe Burrow one day but it's just the reality that the stats are similar what I'll never do in the preseason is compile Fernando Mendoza's stats over the first three games and say this would have been a bad full game or look at this compared to this person because the preseason statistically does not matter I don't know how many times I can beat this from after Mendoza's first preseason game I just wanted to see how the first overall picks in the draft did compared to him and I wanted to see if there was a correlation with how they did versus how they end up being ranked and that kind of was you can kind of put this person here this person down here but overall we found that it really didn't matter so here's what we're going to do this is going to be like a stream of consciousness video where we're just going to talk it through and then you can comment the rage if you want you can comment the positivity if you want but at the end of the day we just have to be honest what did we see this preseason what are our expectations going into the year because it seems like every year people like to say every year the Raiders fans get their hopes up and then they suck and then everybody sucks and then they want to fire everybody that's not the pattern that I see with Raider fans and maybe this is most fandoms that root for teams that are historically not great what I notice about Raider fandom is that they are very level-headed going into the preseason they think look three win team first pick in the draft let's just develop the young guys let's maybe try to get the five or six seven wins if we're lucky and then in 2027 we're going to really go for it and then once the preseason rolls around all of a sudden it's oh my god this wide receiver room is horrible and can we block on the right side of the offensive line and what are we going to do with Mendoza he's struggling what happened to the tampered expectations I'm not saying that you can't get angry or upset at people not playing well we obviously root for everybody to do great but what happened to the mutual understanding that we had that this was not going to be a playoff team going into 2026 that this was not a team that was going to compete for Super Bowl that this was a team that said before they drafted him that the rookie they were going to draft was not going to play and you can see why people have looked worse than Fernando Mendoza and have been drafted first overall and started and were horrible like Caleb Williams and then the next year they were awesome Trevor Lawrence we still don't know if he's good Baker Mayfield up and down career Sam Darnold bust a Super Bowl champion there is nothing you can take from these games and tack it on to the prediction of how we are going to compete for a Super Bowl one day here's what I saw out of the preseason I saw a first team offense that gelled pretty well together the offensive line looks good Ashton Gente looked good and he was healthy and Mike Washington Jr. looks very legit looks like an RB1 so where the wide receiver might be struggling our running back room even with Dylan Laube in the mix now is probably one of the better running back rooms in the league if Mike Washington Jr. is in fact able to do this against starters again it's the preseason so it doesn't quite matter as much I saw the defense that initially struggled then picked up the pace in games two and three and was pretty good we'll get to the shifting blame segment that Raiders fans like to do down in a couple topics I saw a kid in Fernando Mendoza that did a lot of good and did a lot of bad because he is a rookie he's never taking snaps under center in high school or in college and they drilled the hell out of him in the offseason and Clint Kubiak made a concerted effort to make him the most uncomfortable this preseason by constantly drilling three step five step seven step play action back to the defense let it rip and you make these mistakes now so you don't make them later nothing I saw from Fernando Mendoza concerned me if he's doing this stuff in year two or year three when he's a starter then we could have a conversation but you saw someone in Cam Ward who started last year and you see him in the preseason this year it don't look good you see someone in Bryce Young who in year four is finally putting it all together who is the first overall pick but for the first two and a half years looked like a real big bust and I like little Bryce I'm rooting for him he's on my fantasy team from my dynasty I really do like him I think he's going to be a good player but the only thing you could take away from Fernando Mendoza is he's a tough SOB which we've already known and he's got a strong arm and he's very accurate and he's a hard worker with a good head and shoulders we just wanted to see if all that was true and it was any mistake that he makes doesn't mean that it's not something that's going to plague him for the rest of his career but that doesn't mean that because he's doing it now that you can say he's going to do it later he's a rookie and I know I know it's been a long time since we've had a rookie quarterback and I guess I should have transitioned to this it's been a long time since we've had a rookie quarterback and there's a lot of Derek lovers and a lot of Derek haters I think we could admit though he played pretty well for being a second round pick right he was the best quarterback in that draft class and he was the fourth one taken I believe it was Blake Bortles, Teddy Bridgewater was that Johnny Menzel as well I'm not positive I think that could have been the Johnny Menzel draft someone remind me I know it was Bortles and Bridgewater Derek was either the third or fourth taken and he played about as well as a second round pick could play and that first year was ugly we were 0-10 or 11 before we won our first game we ended up 3-13 and then the next year we were awesome and he did a lot of good and a lot of bad and I saw some people say well he took the job from Matt Schaub Mendoza couldn't take the job from Kirk Cousins Kirk Cousins is significantly better than Matt Schaub was and Matt Schaub also got injured in the preseason which is the reason why they ran with Derek Carr in the first place and then Derek never looked back but it's all about expectation I'm going to combine these topics together it's all about expectation it's all about what did you think was going to happen did you think he was going to come in and set the world on fire because I want to ask you this question if that's what you thought if you thought that tell me how sustainable that is Patrick Mullins didn't do that because he sat for the first full year besides one game Jayden Daniels and CJ Stroud are the most recent examples of players coming in and setting the league on fire and how's it gone for them lately maybe a little less fair for Jayden Daniels because he was injured but when he wasn't injured it didn't look that great to begin with anyway and CJ Stroud can't figure out how to throw a football down the field I'm not saying that because they played in the first week or in the first season that now they are bad but I'm saying where's the sustainability maybe they would be better if they didn't play right away right even people like Drake May 15 picks or 15 touchdowns 10 picks in his first year probably with a couple fumbles mixed in he had three or four fumbles in a playoff game this year where he was one vote away from winning the MVP again I think it's a lot of rage bait going around it's probably from some people who aren't even Raider fans but my concern level with this team is low because I know what they're going to be going into the season a six-win team my concern with Fernando Mendoza is low because he's not going to play and he's going to get better by not playing right now he's playing with second string and third string linemen he's not even handing the ball off to Mike Washington anymore and the interception that he threw Clint Kubiak said today was a hundred percent on Jalen Naylor he loved the decision he loved that he ripped it in there and Clint Kubiak said Jalen needed to make a play I know we're very reactionary after the initial preseason game right when it ends but I had the benefit of kind of not being able to see it in real time and all the doom and gloom stuff was like well it's a preseason game we're we're totaling up Mendoza's preseason stats and putting him up against Ty Simpson are you guys watching the Ty Simpson highlights he's just thinking and dunking his way down the field he had a nice touchdown through across his body I guarantee he won't be able to do that with you know Michael Parsons running down his throat but you know we'll freak out because he's doing that against twos and threes and fours what really uh frustrates me about how people operate in the offseason and again I'm not trying to police people on how they act I just think there's a path to living a happier life and again it's just a lot of you know negativity for negativity's sake is the shifting of blame that first game we scored a touchdown for Cousins drive Trey Tucker and and Michael Mayer and all them looked really good Nash and looked good and then we scored a touchdown on one of the Fernando drives and Jack Besch got a touchdown and Malik Benson flashed but the defense wasn't good so oh my god Rob Reed Leonard is Patrick Graham 2.0 and it's a first time coordinator and this is going to be a rough year defensively even though again we didn't play and then in the second game it was well the defense was slightly better but Mendoza threw that pick six so who cares about the defense because now Mendoza is the one we got to shift the blame to and then in this game it was oh my god these wide receivers are the reason we're settling for field goals and what are we doing and we don't care about the fact that the defense didn't give up a touchdown all game and it was Eddie Pinera versus Matt Gay also hey shout out to Matt Gay looks like a pretty good kicker he missed a deep deep deep one but look we got to get him a little closer okay he's not exactly uh Justin Tucker with the leg I don't understand the shifting of the blame especially in a preseason game even after week one you're gonna see it you're gonna see the overreactions flying we did it last year when we beat the Patriots we got to live and learn from the overreactions that we have in the preseason and the offseason week one and week 10 you never know what's going to happen week to week we do not know what this offense or defense is going to look like because they don't run anything in the preseason they don't play their starters we're not playing the starting units Tom Brady said it to Kirk Cousins I think the quote was something like don't let yourself be fooled into thinking that you've made all this progress on the rest of the league because the rest of the league also has training camp and the offseason in the preseason they're doing the same things we're all doing and the blame slider moving wherever we want to move it is driving me crazy and now it's on the wide receiver room guys we're not competing for a championship there is no move that we could have made at the room in the offseason to push us into competing for a championship or push us into the playoffs that also match the timeline of this team John Spock took one out and signed a bunch of free agents to three-year deals because that's the window that we have with Fernando Mendoza under his rookie quarterback and by year three that's when we should be competing for the playoffs and for the Super Bowl or not for the playoffs but for the Super Bowl with Fernando Mendoza being the first pick in the draft so if you go out and trade for A.J. Brown now you don't have a first round pick to go draft a wide receiver next year if you sign Stefan Diggs now he's taking away reps from Jack Besch and Trey Tucker and Malik Benson and Jalen Naylor which we complained about last year with Tyler Lockett and if you sign Stefan Diggs does this move the needle from a five-win team to a ten-win team no so why would you do that we needed to fix a thousand different team things about this team and we fixed about 800 of them we needed to really revamp this offensive line we did that we needed new quarterbacks we got two of them we needed a backup running back we got that we needed two more linebackers we got those we need to help in the secondary and we got Zeke Matthews and Jermon McCoy and we re-signed Stokes and we got Trayden Stooks to beat out Isaiah Polamal and now Polamal can play a little bit linebacker which he's better at you cannot go from a three-win team and fix every single thing about your team so the wide receiver room was the room that was neglected and they're hoping for somebody to step up but if they don't next year will be the year where they go and try to trade for somebody or sign somebody as a free agent or draft somebody in the top 10 that's going to be a difference maker stop complaining about the wide receiver room unless you have an answer to give me about how we could have fixed it this year to match the timeline because young great number ones are not just growing on trees where you could pick off for fifth round picks that ain't how it works is your answer brand deny you good luck with that they're going to roll with what they have they're going to try to scheme people open you're going to see a lot of Brock Bowers lined up at wide receiver and Michael Mayer lined up at tight end to you know make up for the lack of star power at wide receiver I think Trey Tucker is going to look pretty good as well only time will tell but it's all about expectation and people throw these expectations out the window once they start seeing like real in-game action for games that just don't count so before I continue I do want to just say hey hit that subscribe button if you can we're trying to get to 17 000 we're almost halfway there please check that out and also look patreon instagram movie reaction channel I just want to let you know if you're signed up to be a youtube member you get the same benefits that you do for patreon but patreon is a little less expensive it's five dollars on patrons eight dollars on youtube the reason I do that is because youtube takes 30 patreon takes like five percent so either way I'm only getting five bucks if you sign up for patreon or youtube I prefer it I mean I don't care what you do you can do whatever you want the smart thing to do would be to sign up to patreon because it is cheaper so that's linked in the description below if you want to do both you can do both but so do what you want Kirk Cousins I think he's going to be really good this year I've been saying this for the longest time the reason why I don't think Fernando Mendoza is going to play is one because it's smart not to plan but two because I think Kirk Cousins is going to look a lot better than people think he made one suspect suspect decision but of course it's just Jack Jones being sugar high and jumping around if that was a double move it'd be a 50 yard touchdown you're not going to get a lot of that happening in a regular season with corners and I do think Kirk Cousins is ball knowledge is elite and I don't think his arm is shot obviously it's not what it used to be but I do think there's a world where we are scoring at a more efficient level now with the two-headed monster running back and the two-headed monster at tight end than people think I think this could be a top 17 offense with Kirk Cousins which I think would be above expectation for most people going into the season look an Achilles injury is a two-year injury we saw Aaron Rodgers his second year back was a lot better than his first year back and Rodgers is older than Cousins Cousins looks pretty good I think again you can't take a lot away from the preseason but they're not running a lot of their stuff too and I think specifically him and Trey Tucker have a nice little rapport and I like the way Clint Kubiak has teased an ability to use Trey Tucker and I think you know the offensive line being better than a lot of people outside the Raiders fear think it's going to be is going to be one of the reasons why I think Kirk Cousins is going to play a lot this year because he's going to be upright a lot this year and who knows we're favored in the first game the Chargers are a really tough team we know that and then the Saints are like a sneaky decent team if we can somehow split one of those games and start the season two and one that buys Kirk Cousins another three or four games but you know we get into that gauntlet of like the Rams and the Bills and the Chiefs and all those really good teams but for the time being I kind of liked what I've seen from Kirk Cousins so am I crazy about that I don't know you let me know and then roster cuts it's coming up it's never fun but we are first in the waiver wire for every single position so that's good maybe they will add some wide receiver depth it's just not going to be anybody that's going to have a huge huge impact on this season I don't think so I want to hear predictions about roster cuts who doesn't make the team who makes the team when I did this with Graf we were talking about Moffie, Jordan Meredith, Dante Thornton um Aidan O'Connell, Hemby there's a lot of people that might not make it that would really stink Keiron Crawford might have to go on IR probably right maybe Ashton Shenty goes in short term IR maybe Dante goes in short term IR which IR which frees up three more spots assuming Jacob Clark probably makes the practice squad poor kid didn't get any reps in any of these games but yeah roster cuts let me know what you think shout out to as I remove this stuff my five and ten dollar patrons and youtube members like I said patreon's a little bit cheaper so that'd be the smarter move for you guys but it's the same thing either way click the big join button below become a member here are the links for all the socials and all the other movie youtube channels hit that like button comment away and please be sure to subscribe it's free I'll throw no charges to you I love you guys I'll see you next time