The Oakland Raiders won their first game of the season last night—beating the rival Chiefs 24-20—but hoo boy, did they try to give it away on the last series. Down three, with about nine minutes left in the game, Derek Carr engineered a lovely clock-eating drive, ending with a nine-yard touchdown to James Jones and a four point lead. The drive was 17 plays and lasted more than seven minutes; it was the kind of drive good teams seal games with. But these are the Oakland Raiders.
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The Chiefs had less than two minutes to win the game, and it would take a touchdown, so the Raiders just needed to not fuck it up. On fourth-and-three from the Kanas City 46, the Raiders stopped the Chiefs, but three separate penalties could have been called on the play. Illegal use of hands was accepted, and the Chiefs got a fresh set of downs. The Raiders held strong, though, and even sacked Alex Smith on third-and-six. That's when the Raiders nearly Raidered themselves.Sio Moore took Smith down and then sprinted nearly 15 yards into the backfield to celebrate. He was then joined by several teammates, also celebrating, while Smith was getting his team to the line to run the next play. Moore and his teammates slowly—and I mean slowly—realized what was happening and sprinted back to the line, but the ball was being snapped. If it wasn't for Justin Tuck frantically calling for a timeout, Oakland would have been penalized and the Chiefs would have been that much closer to making the comeback a reality. Jim Nantz was practically seething in a way only Jim Nantz can seethe. "Come on, guys," he muttered as the play was unfolding.
Crisis was averted with the timeout, though even that benefitted Kansas City since they were just sacked and had no timeouts to use to collect themselves as the clock continued to move. After the dust settled, Smith threw incomplete to Frankie Hammond on fourth down, and the Raiders won for the first time in over a calendar year.[NFL Network]