Offensively, almost nothing went right for the Raiders. Washington came out with an excellent game plan the Raiders were not prepared for. It took them time to adjust, it threw a wrench in their execution, and the team just couldn’t get on the same page.

The worst part about it for the Raiders is there wasn’t one point in the game in which the offense looked like it could have taken control of the game. Every time they made a play, it was negated by something else that went wrong.

There is no sugarcoating what happened on Sunday night in the Raiders’ 27-10 loss, but it is important to remember that this is only the third game of the season. The team still has the talent to make things right, but first they will have to learn from this game and ensure that this debacle doesn’t get repeated.

Washington coverage shift

After playing a heavy dose of man-to-man coverage in the first two weeks of the season, Washington caught the Raiders by surprise by playing almost exclusively zone coverage.

The Raiders came out on the first play of the game and ran their staple run play, “DUO.” Washington had eight in the box with one safety deep, but the Raiders still managed to get three yards.

Offensive coordinator Todd Downing likely saw the defense and decided to try to punish the Redskins for loading the box by calling a play-action pass from the same formation. He probably expected Washington to come out with the same aggressive front and man coverage because the play looked like it was designed to freeze the free safety to get Amari Cooper a one-on-one with the corner.

The defense does some disguising with a lot of pre-snap movement from the two safeties. It’s unclear to Carr if one was going roll into the box because of their unorthodox movement. When the ball is snapped, they drop into a two-deep zone.

Carr clearly wanted to hit Cooper on the fade route. The safety did turn his hips away from Cooper for a second, but Cooper took an inside release and was pushed too far inside by the corner. His proximity is too close to the safety and the throw would have been a nearly impossible one.

Carr should have moved to his next read but all the routes were easily covered by the two-deep coverage. His best option was to either throw the ball away or try to find a lane to scramble. This play would set the tone for the rest of night in which Carr could never really get a grip of what the Washington defense was doing.

Squatting corners

On top of disguising well, the Washington defense did a good job of switching up its zone coverages from down to down. It was difficult to get a bead on what they were doing, especially considering they didn’t show this type of diversity on film. Carr had to learn what they were doing on a fly and it never seemed like he got comfortable.

Just when it seemed like they were going to give a predictable Cover 3 look, they played an unorthodox technique by having their corners, who are supposed to be responsible for deep thirds, squat on short routes.

The offense has a simple “hank” concept called, which is a great concept against Cover 3. Usually the outside receivers will get open on their curls.

Carr looks to his right and expects that the curl will open up, but cornerback Josh Norman squats on the route, causing Carr to hesitate and get sacked.

The offense adjusted to this type of defense by having the outside receivers run a stutter and try to get the corners to bite and get behind them, but it was very late in the game and Carr threw an inaccurate pass that got Crabtree hurt.

Not enough high/low concepts

Washington gave up nearly 300 yards to tight ends and running backs in the first two weeks of the season. With starter Mason Foster missing the game, I thought taking advantage of the inside linebacker unit with high/low concepts involving Jared Cook, Jalen Richard and DeAndre Washington would be a huge part of the game plan.

There were instances of it, but not nearly enough for the offense to catch a rhythm. Downing has aggressively attacked mismatches early in the season but failed to take advantage of this one.

Downing has a great play called against Cover 2 zone with a two verticals on the right of the formation with Marshawn Lynch running an “out” underneath it from the tailback position. This creates a high/low bind for the “inside wall” defender.

Because of the rules of the defense, he runs with Roberts, which leaves an opening for Lynch. Lynch gets the ball with some space and makes the linebacker miss to set up a manageable third-and-1.

On the very next play, a four verticals concept is called instead of running the ball with Washington’s dime personnel (six defensive backs) on the field. If a pass play had to be called, the offense had a much better chance with a high/low concept or something isolating a running back on a linebacker.

The defense was playing a form of Cover 3 with pattern matching. It was designed specifically to defend four verticals. Carr actually threw a touchdown to Seth Roberts with this same concept against this same defense in Week 1 against the Titans, but this time the ball was severely underthrown.

Situationally, it just was an over-aggressive call. At that point, not much was going right with the passing game. They needed to establish a rhythm by either running the ball or call a high-percentage passing concept to extend the drive. It felt like offense was so desperate to hit a big play instead of remaining patient and taking what the defense gave them.

Varying personnel and formations

The Raiders became too predictable with their personnel and formation usage. The defense seemed to know when they were going to run or pass. Out of 31 pass attempts, Carr only ran one play action and it was intercepted. Downing has to make it more difficult on defenses to read their keys with more deception.

When Carr hands the ball off, the defense flies downhill and the backside end chases the play without any regard for a possible play action. The bootleg has hardly been used this season but could be a great complement to the Raiders run game. It keeps the backside end honest and forces linebackers to think twice before committing too hard to the run. Carr has had success running the boot in the past, so I would expect to see it making its way back into the offense.

What else could go wrong?

Another rhythm killer for the offense was early snaps from center Rodney Hudson. There were a few times when Carr and the rest of the offense weren’t ready for the snap, which threw the entire play off.

The offense might have tried to use some sort of silent snap count on the road, but it wasn’t executed correctly. On the instances that it did happen, the receivers didn’t know the ball was snapped and started their routes late which gave the pass rush a head start.

It also didn’t allow Carr to really see the defense because the unexpected snap would break his concentration.

The play clock wasn’t a problem because there were six seconds left, but something triggered Hudson to snap the ball. Carr appeared to be still surveying the field but was interrupted by the snap. He didn’t see the blitz coming or that Richard, the running back, had a one-on-one with a much slower linebacker, whom he badly beat with an angle route.

Out of all the strange things in this game, though, seeing the offensive line get physically handled was perplexing. This unit has been so good in the past two years that I never even considered them to be a possible liability.

The Raiders linemen had trouble blocking second level defenders in the run game and at times got manhandled in pass protection. I’m not trying to absolve them for the way they played, but Carr could have helped the offensive line out by breaking the pocket sometimes.

Washington’s pass rushers were bull-rushing hard inside. They were practically giving up outside contain and Carr just refused to break the pocket to try to make a play.

Before the Raiders forget this game, they have to take some lessons from it. Carr had one of the worst games in his career and has to learn what to do next time he faces this type of defense. Downing had a great first two games as the offensive coordinator but has to have his team better prepared and learn how to get his team out of a funk. This team has some experience under their belts now and simply cannot allow any team or environment to throw them this far off their game again.

(Top photo: Rob Carr/Getty Images)