The NFL got its first taste of the Raiders’ offense under Klint Kubiak on Sunday, and to the surprise of no one it looked a lot like the offense he ran in Seattle a year ago.
In their week 1 victory against the Miami Dolphins, Kubiak’s offense focused heavily on the running game and effectively exploited the Miami secondary with short passes.
Also notably, Kirk Cousins was under center for nearly 65 percent of the Raiders’ offensive snaps, and that element of Kubiak’s scheme was something FOX commentator Mark Schlereth talked about with Kubiak before the game.
Kubiak is known for his preference to keep his quarterback under center (Seattle did it the second-most in the NFL last year), but Schlereth said he was caught off guard by Kubaik’s no. 1 reason why.
On Tuesday, Schlereth shared a portion of his conversation with Kubiak on the Stinkin’ Truth Podcast…
“In their preseason game, going into this game, they were 20 of 30 snaps with Kirk Cousins in 12 personnel, heavy personnel, fullback. And they used it exclusively. They also, Mike, which I thought was tremendous, they got into a bunch of under center stuff. They were… the number two in the league at 52.6 percent of the time when he was with Seattle last year and then the Rams were the only ones that were under center at a higher percentage.
He’s going to use it. So I asked him, ‘What is it about under center?’ And I said my perspective is you open up your run game, so you’re not eliminating… [around] 35 percent of your run game. So it opens up your run game and it opens up your play action because your quarterback has to turn his back to the defense which makes everybody’s feet stop. Safeties and linebackers stop.’
But you know what he said? And this was something I hadn’t thought of, or I hadn’t really talked about. He goes, ‘My number one thing about being under center, it makes the defense play legit and they can’t rush the passer as well because every fake, they’ve got to stop. They’ve got to protect the run. So it makes our pass protection, our keys in protection so much better.”
Raiders’ offense running tighter formations…
Silver & Black Sports Network’s Jesse Merrick dug up a statistic on Wednesday that speaks to Kubiak’s commitment to playing power football.
According to Next Gen Stats, the Raiders’ offensive formations on Sunday averaged just 18.1 yards – more than five yards tighter than their average formation in 2025.
x: @raidersbeat