Ten Games to Prove 2025 Is Over

The Raiders went 2–5 in one-score games last season. That number didn't just explain a 3–14 finish—it was the whole autopsy. A roster with genuine offensive weapons, a patchwork defense, and an organizational inability to execute when the margin for error collapsed to single digits. The offseason was built around correcting exactly that. Kirk Cousins, a healthy Ashton Jeanty, Brock Bowers, Tre Tucker—the argument was that this group could finally close.

Four games into a losing streak, the argument is under serious strain. The Raiders are averaging minus two points per game on the season, and that number hasn't budged during the skid. That's the unsettling part. They aren't being blown out; they're losing the same tight games they lost all of last year. The 33–30 defeat to Buffalo is the one that lingers. A three-point loss. The kind of game where execution at the margins—a third-down stop, a field-position decision, one clean possession late—separates a team that's turning the corner from one that's stuck in the same loop.

Cousins has been genuinely good. Seventeen touchdowns against five interceptions through eight games is a quarterback doing his job. Tucker has been reliable all season. Jeanty is active and healthy, and Mike Washington Jr. has added a legitimate second rushing option. The pieces are there. What isn't there, consistently, is the ability to make the play that ends a close game on the right side. That's a different problem than talent, and it's the one the Raiders have never solved.

The defense makes it harder. Jeremy Chinn leads the team in tackles, Hezekiah Masses has three interceptions and has been the secondary's best story, but this unit gave up 45 points to New England and couldn't hold leads against Buffalo or the Rams. Tonka Hemingway spent time in concussion protocol. The defensive tackle rotation has been reshuffled after a release. Folorunso Fatukasi was supposed to anchor the interior and change the identity of this front—that hasn't materialized into consistent stops when the game is on the line.

Here's the math that actually matters right now: Las Vegas is 1.5 games from the last wild card spot with ten games remaining. That's survivable. Eleven teams still have a mathematical path, which means the Raiders are not a cautionary tale yet—they're a team in a familiar crisis with enough runway to escape it. But the window is not generous. Every close loss from here tightens the margin further, and the schedule will not soften enough to manufacture easy wins. My read is that the next two or three games are the real referendum on whether this organization has genuinely changed its execution culture or simply redecorated the same building.

The 2025 collapse didn't happen because the Raiders lacked talent. It happened because they couldn't win the game within the game when everything was tight. The 2026 version of this team has better personnel, a more coherent offensive identity, and a quarterback who has earned some trust. What it hasn't shown yet is that any of that translates when the fourth quarter arrives and the score is close. Ten games is enough time to answer that question. It is not enough time to keep avoiding it.