The Chiefs Can All but End the Raiders’ Season With a Win on Sunday

A Chiefs win over a struggling Raiders team could very well spell doom for Las Vegas as it hits the final stretch of the season.

After starting the season 3-0, the Las Vegas Raiders proceeded to split their next four games. 5-2 is a pretty solid spot to be in heading into the bye week, but the Raiders' next five games have seen them come crashing back down to earth. After dropping three in a row to the New York Giants, Kansas City Chiefs and Cincinnati Bengals, Las Vegas squeaked out a Thanksgiving day upset over the Dallas Cowboys before losing to the Washington Football team last week. To say it's been a bumpy ride for the Raiders would be an understatement.

No other team in the NFL has dealt with more off-the-field issues than the Raiders in 2021. Not only is former head coach Jon Gruden now out of the picture as a result of an email scandal, but young wide receiver Henry Ruggs III was involved in a horrible automobile accident that prompted the team to release him while he faces ongoing legal proceedings. That, alone, is enough to completely derail a team's season. The Raiders have managed to stay afloat under interim head coach Rich Bisaccia, but Sunday's game against the Chiefs is their biggest of the season.

To this point, the Raiders have the league's eighth-best offense in terms of yards per game. The team is 17th in scoring, though, as well as Football Outsiders' Offensive DVOA. On defense, Gus Bradley's unit is 19th in yards allowed per game and 26th in scoring. By DVOA standards, the Raiders' defense is the 22nd-ranked group in the NFL. None of these numbers are completely alarming but considering how the team is 1-4 in its last five games, it's easy to see how much better it ranked before this tough stretch. Hondo Carpenter of Raider Maven joined me on Friday's Roughing the Kicker podcast to talk about how devastating a loss to the Chiefs would be to the Raiders' playoff hopes.

The Chiefs come into this game riding relatively high. The team is on a five-game winning streak and while its offense has yet to snap out of its funk, the defense has played some of the best football of the Steve Spagnuolo era. Head coach Andy Reid has preached getting back to the basics on offense in an effort to return turn in some better performances, and the hope for his offense is that it can replicate the success it had the last time these two teams squared off. 

In that Week 10 beatdown, the Chiefs won 41-14. Patrick Mahomes threw for 406 yards and five touchdowns. Travis Kelce had one of his best games of the season. Tyreek Hill hauled in a pair of touchdowns. It may have been the Chiefs' best performance of the year. If they can do anything close to that on Sunday against the Raiders, that could spell doom for one of the teams currently fighting for dear life behind Kansas City in the AFC West standings.

As things currently stand, the 6-6 Raiders are a pair of games back in the AFC West and are a game out of the conference's final wild-card spot. Not only are their hopes to win the division extinguished if they drop to 6-7, but they also risk losing significant ground in the race to simply make the playoffs. Their final four games after this one — against the Cleveland Browns, Indianapolis Colts, Denver Broncos and Los Angeles Chargers — make for no easy slate. The Raiders need to go 3-2 in their final five games just to get to 9-8 to close out the regular season. That may not even be enough for the final playoff seed in the AFC.

Mathematically, of course, a loss to the Chiefs doesn't doom the Raiders' 2021 campaign. With that said, this is a team that has been faced with a lot of adversity this season. If a 1-4 stretch turns into a 1-5 one featuring a loss to the division-leading Chiefs, the fork can be picked up off the table and effectively be stuck into them. In a year of dreams and nightmares for the Raiders, the Boogeyman may finally put their quest for the postseason to rest on Sunday afternoon.

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