Raiders-Colts Have a Ghost in Their Past

The Las Vegas Raiders and the Indianapolis Colts face off today at Allegiant Stadium, but don't forget the Ghost in their past.

The Las Vegas Raiders have been lost on the road, but this Sunday they are coming home to Allegiant Stadium in Sin City for a game against the Indianapolis Colts, a team that might be worse off mentally than they are.

The Colts (3-5-1) have lost three straight games and on Monday they fired Coach Frank Reich and replaced him with former All-Pro lineman Jeff Saturday, who has never coached an NFL game.

The Raiders (2-6) have yet to find their way under first-year Coach Josh McDaniels, having lost five consecutive road games, but they are 2-1 at Allegiant Stadium.

These teams have met 20 times over the years, most famously during the 1977 playoffs, with many of those games taking place when the Raiders were in Oakland or Los Angles, and when the Colts were in Baltimore.

The Raiders hold an 11-9 lead in the series, having beaten the Colts, 23-20, in the next-to-last game a season ago at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis when Daniel Carlson kicked a 33-yard field goal with no time left as the Silver and Black were in the midst of a five-game winning streak that would carry them to the playoffs with a 9-7 record.

Quarterback Derek Carr, who completed 24-of-31 passes for 255 yards and an 11-yard touchdown pass to give the Raiders a 20-17 lead early in the fourth quarter, also threw two interceptions and had an apparent scoring pass called back, but found a way to win.

“We’re finding a way to do it because we have the right kind of guys, and there’s never been a doubt, there’s never a finger pointed, you know, at this or that, and this coach (Jon Gruden) is not there, and all this kind of stuff,” Carr said after engineering one of the 31 comeback victories of his career in the fourth quarter and overtime.

“Nobody cares about any of those other things. We have a bunch of guys who believe that and just keep going.”

Michael Badgley kicked a 41-yard field goal for the Colts with 1:56 left to tie the score, but Carr took the Raiders down the field in the final minute and hit Renfrow with what appeared to be a touchdown pass, but he was ruled down in what might have turned out of be a stroke of luck.

It set the stage for Carlson’s fourth game-winning field goal of the season.

“I'm glad I was (ruled down), because then we were able to run the clock down and give Daniel another game-winning field goal,” Renfrow said.

The Raiders have won three of the last five games against the Colts under Carr dating to 2016 when he passed for 232 yards and three touchdowns to outduel Andrew Luck in a 33-25 victory at the Oakland Coliseum.

However, Carr sustained a broken right leg late in the game and without him the Raiders lost in the first round of the playoffs.

“That’s obviously a big blow,” Coach Jack Del Rio said of the injury after Carr limped off the field to chants of: “MVP, MVP, MVP,” from the crowd.

The Colts had beaten the Raiders four straight times before then, but longtime fans of Raider Nation know the greatest game in the series came in a 1977 AFC Divisional playoff at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore on Christmas Eve.

The Colts held a 31-28 lead in the final minutes when quarterback Kenny “Snake” Stabler sent tight end Dave “The Ghost” Casper down the field on a post pattern. However, with safety Bruce Laird, who already had a 61-yard interception for a touchdown in the game, waiting in the middle of the field Casper, broke to the outside.

Stabler read Casper’s move perfectly and hit him with a 42-yard bomb to the Baltimore 14-yard line and Errol Mann kicked a 22-yard field goal with 29 seconds left in regulation to send the game to overtime at 31-31.

“I played a lot of outfield as a kid,” Casper said of his ability get to Stabler’s pass. “I put my head down and ran to a spot. And when I looked up, thank God, the ball was coming into my hands. If I looked up a second later, I wouldn’t have seen it.”

Said Stabler: “Dave just made a great play. … You realized afterward you just played in a special football game, an exciting football game. A game that was fun to play in.”

Mann had a 48-yard field goal attempt blocked in overtime, but eventually, Stabler, who passed for 345 yards and three touchdowns, hit Casper with a 10-yard scoring pass 43 seconds into the second sudden-death overtime to give the Oakland Raiders a 37-31 victory.

Of course, that will be known forever as “The Ghost to the Post Game,” even though Casper didn’t go all the way to the post.

Sunday's game against the Colts kicks off at 4:05 p.m. EST and 1:05 p.m. PST, and it can be seen on CBS.

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