Winning Close Games Is a Skill. It's Also the Hardest Thing to Trust After Two Weeks.

Here is the uncomfortable truth about the Raiders' 2–0 start: the thing they're doing well is the exact thing they did worst last season, and two games is nowhere near enough to know which version is real. Last year's close-game collapse — 29% in one-score decisions — wasn't a fluke of circumstance. It was a pattern, and patterns that deep don't reverse themselves because the calendar flipped to a new season.

I've written twice now about what this early stretch means, and I want to be precise about where I've landed. The September 23rd piece argued the 2–0 record was less important than the method. The September 24th piece pushed further — that winning close games was treating the symptom rather than curing the disease. Both of those holds are still correct. But there's a third question underneath them that deserves its own examination: what, specifically, would have to be true for this to be a genuine reversal rather than a two-game sample doing what small samples do?

Start with what changed structurally. The roster that went 3–14 last season bled out across three years of organizational drift — the 2024 team went 4–13, and the 2025 version couldn't improve on it. Devin White, who anchored the linebacker corps with 174 tackles last season, is gone to Detroit. Chris Collier is on Injured Reserve. Brock Bowers, who produced at a level that made him the offensive engine in 12 games last season, is listed as questionable. The pieces that surrounded last year's close losses haven't been uniformly upgraded — some of them have been subtracted. Folorunso Fatukasi arriving to shore up the defensive line matters, but one addition doesn't transform the structural conditions that produced a ten-game losing streak.

The quarterback situation adds its own layer of instability. Aidan O'Connell is listed as questionable. Fernando Mendoza, the four-year, $57.27 million rookie, has already gotten meaningful snaps against the Chargers. Geno Smith threw 19 touchdowns and 17 interceptions across 15 games last season — productive enough to move the ball, fragile enough in the moments that cost them. Whatever the quarterback room looks like week to week right now, it is not a settled, proven unit that has demonstrated the ability to manage a game's final minutes under pressure. That's precisely the condition that determines close-game outcomes.

Here's the honest version of where the numbers put us: two wins in one-score games moves the Raiders from 0-for-nothing to 2–0 in that category for 2026. That's meaningful only if the underlying execution has changed — if the decision-making in the final two minutes is sharper, if the defensive stops are coming from scheme and personnel rather than opponent mistakes, if the offensive line is holding long enough to let the skill players operate. None of that is visible in a two-game window, and I'd be doing the reader a disservice to pretend otherwise. My read is that the Raiders have earned the right to be watched closely, not the right to be believed. There's a difference, and the next six weeks will be the actual diagnosis.