The Raiders are trying to get some kind of traction on offense, but after nine games it looks from the outside like little progress is being made under offensive coordinator Chip Kelly.
The concerns around Kelly’s system have been well documented over the first two months of the season and former Raiders’ offensive lineman Marshall Newhouse commented this week on some of his concerns.
His first issue with Thursday’s game was the fact that Brock Bowers wasn’t more involved in the game plan, despite the fact that the Broncos weren’t giving him extra attention.
“What I said after the game. It was like, ‘Surely, they just had [Bowers] covered top down, two pairs of eyes on him the whole game. But that wasn’t the case,” Newhouse said on the Just Win podcast.
It still isn’t clear why Bowers wasn’t utilized more against the Broncos, and the mystery is even greater considering Bowers caught 12 passes for 127 yards and three touchdowns the week before.
Newhouse said when he watches the Raiders on offense this season, he doesn’t have an understanding of what Kelly is trying to do.
“Where is the ‘why’ in the things that Chip Kelly calls and the things that they’re doing on offense? I don’t see a lot of the ‘why,'” Newhouse said.
“I don’t know if they’re just hoping that [Ashton] Jeanty and Bowers can carry them. And we’ve seen this. There’s not enough talent [on the Raiders] to do things that way. Sometimes you can get bailed out when you’re at Ohio State and you have the number one recruiting class every year. That’s just not the case anymore.”
“You would like to see Chip Kelly have some more semblance of feel for the game. But… this is now his second tenure in the NFL. Maybe that is just not what he’s built for.”
Looking ahead to the second half of the season, the situation isn’t going to get any easier for Kelly and the offense.
Jackson Powers-Johnson was placed on injured reserve this week and neither Powers-Johnson nor Kolton Miller are a guarantee to return from injured reserve before the end of the season.
The Athletic’s Ted Nguyen also shared his concerns with Chip Kelly’s offense on the podcast.
“This [was] just another game where I just didn’t see them attack certain areas of weakness against the Broncos’ defense,” Nguyen said on the same podcast (video below).
“We talked about it before the podcast. The one area where you can get this defense is targeting your tight ends. [Denver was] giving up the most yards per catch to tight ends in the league, and they couldn’t get Brock Bowers going. I thought maybe they double-teamed Brock Bowers a lot… but that wasn’t the case. You’re getting Brock Bowers singled up in man coverage and you couldn’t find ways to get him the ball…”
Additionally, Nguyen said Kelly has been running too many of the same concepts all season.
“They ran mesh, I don’t know, a hundred times in that game,” Nguyen continued. “I get it, mesh, when you have two crossing patterns and you’re trying to create a rub against man, but that’s not the only answer against man coverage. You know the Broncos have seen mesh a lot just based on the type of coverage they played.”
“I think with Chip Kelly, we’re seeing a lot of the problems with college offensive coordinators that are making the jump into the league. They just don’t have a very diverse pass concept menu and that works in college, but in the NFL, when the other team knows what you’re going to do on third and long, it’s just hard to execute. And they run the same stuff over and over again.”
x: @raidersbeat