News, notes, quotes and observations from the Raiders’ 23-20 overtime win over the Kansas City Chiefs at the Coliseum:



— Just the way we all had it figured.

The Raiders wouldn’t be able to run consistently on the Chiefs, the Chiefs would struggle running the ball against the Raiders, and the game would be turned over to rookie fourth-round draft pick Jacoby Ford in the second half.

Ford seemed to be in the middle of everything. He had a couple of tough drops in the first half, but finished with six catches for 148 yards and raced 94 yards for a touchdown with the opening kickoff of the second half.

Early in the fourth quarter, Ford caught a 37-yard pass from Jason Campbell on third-and-8 to help set up a 23-yard field goal by Sebastian Janikowski and a 17-13 Raiders lead.

With 2:06 to play, after a 19-yard catch was negated by a hold on Jared Veldheer, Ford essentially stole a would-be interception from Brandon Flowers to set up Janikowski’s game-tying field goal with three seconds left.

“I was in a position to make a play and should have come down with it,’’ Flowers said. “Jacoby Ford made a great catdch to send it to overtime. He made a play.’’

Then, after the Raiders forced a Chiefs three-and-out in overtime, he accelerated under a post pattern for a 47-yard gain which paved the way to Janikowski’s game winner from 33 yards away.

“You know, it’s something I’ve dreamed of, going out there and making plays,’’ Ford said. “It’s been something I’ve been wanting to do ever since I was little.’’

On a night where Darrius Heyward-Bey was targeted five times and had zero catches, with one outright drop and a couple of leaping near-misses, Ford provided the kind of track star deep threat which surely warmed the heart of Al Davis and brought back memories of Cliff Branch, Willie Gault and the early days of James Jett.

Ford was a 60-meter indoor champion at Clemson and the fastest receiver at the 2010 scouting combine.

“He’s a track guy. He can run fast, he can accelerate,’’ Campbell said. “ I was excited to see Jacoby go get that ball. It meant a lot from quarterback standpoint, you see a guy, you put it out there for him and see him burst into another speed and go get that ball, it’s just exciting, not just me but for the whole team.’’

Ford became the first NFL player since 1963 to have 140 receiving yards and 150 return yards in a game (he had 158 on kickoff returns). The last was Gary Ballman of Pittsburgh in on Nov. 17, 1963, with 161 yards receiving and 159 yards on returns.

— After a poor first half where he posted an 8.3 quarterback rating, Campbell was 15 of 23 for 211 yards and a touchdown in the second half and overtime _ a 109.1 rating.

During the final drive and the overtime drive, Campbell was 7 of 9 for 101 yards.

“It just seemed like one of those days where nothing could go right,’’ Campbell said. “It’s muddy, it’s wet and you’re trying to grind it out. But the whole time, I got a lot of support from my teammates. They were like, `J, keep fighting, keep working. You’ll work your way out of it.’ ‘

— The vaunted running games never got rolling, but the Raiders did more damage than the Chiefs. They at least averaged 4.3 yards per carry, primarily on the strength of a 34-yard run by Darren McFadden.

They also made some headway with some wildcat snaps (22 yards the first three times they tried it) but it never amounted to any points. McFadden threw one pass as the shotgun quarterback that fell incomplete.

Kansas City did even less. Thomas Jones, who gutted the Raiders the last two times he faced them as a member of the Jets, had 32 yards on 19 carries with a long of 7. Kansas City had just 104 yards on 34 carries, a 3.l average.

“We’re pretty good at that now,’’ Raiders coach Tom Cable said. “We’ve improved there. There’s some areas where we still have to play some bunch sets a little better, but we’re getting better at that. It’s showed over a number of weeks now.’’

Defensive tackle Tommy Kelly, whose play in recent weeks is approaching the value of the contract he signed in 2007 paying him $18.125 million in guaranteed money, said Oakland is running the same schemes it ran while being gutted for 249 yards by Houston in Week 4 and 205 yards by Tennessee in Week 1.

“We ain’t changed nothing from first day of training camp up until this point,’’ Kelly said. “We’re just doing a better job executing what he’s calling. That’s it.

“Ain’t nothing changed. Nobody went in the meeting room and came up with some exotic defense. This is the same defense we’ve been running, we’re just executing.

“Lamarr (Houston) and (Matt) Shaughnessy holding the edge, turning the run back inside and me and Big Rich (Seymour) clean it up. We’re just executing. I just hope it continues.’’

— The Raiders are a half-game out of first place and 3-0 in the division with the bye week coming up and a chance to assess the health of corneback Nnamdi Asomugha, tight end Zach Miller, quarterback Bruce Gradkowski and even wide receiver Chaz Schilens.

“You look at teams that make the playoffs every year and win, they’re the teams that stay healthy at that time of the year,” Campbell said. “We’re going into the second half of our schedule, and it will be very important to get guys back. The good thing about us is you saw all the guys step up and make plays, and now to get everyone back up it gives us a better opportunity.”

— Great sign for the Raiders _ overcoming their own inexcusable penalties, as well as a few that appeared pretty flimsy on the part of the officials.

For instance, a 30-yard pass interference call on Chris Johnson, who appeared to briefly lock arms with Chris Chambers but who turned back for the ball in flight and otherwise played it perfectly. It helped set up the Chiefs’ first score.

Or a Nick Miller fumble that appeared at first to be a down-by-contact only to end up a lost fumble.

“We don’t care. We’re that type of team,’’ safety Mike Mitchell said. “ I think we handle adversity well. Like I said, I’m trying not to say anything bad about the refs. But there were some calls that didn’t go our way. And we say screw that, next play. And that’s the type of team we are. No matter what you do, we’re gonna keep fighting you for 60 minutes. That’s the Raiders.”

Raiders players for the most part bit their tongues in the locker room, and Cable stopped short at the podium of saying anything to get himself fined.

The Raiders were hit with 15 flags for 140 yards. During their three-game losing streak, the Raiders have 36 penalties for 339 yards _ a breakneck pace even by their own lofty standards.

And they’ve won all three times, although Cable is getting tired of seeing all the pre-snap violations.

“It seemed like every play there for awhile,’’ Cable said. “I don’t know what the deal is. I know we’re not that undisciplined. I know because I’m there every day in practice.’’

— On the series after the Chiefs failed to get a first down on a fourth-and-6 play with Javier Arenas, the Raiders attempted a direct snap to Rock Cartwright who gained two yards on fourth-and-5.

The Chiefs then took advantage of the short field and rive for a touchdown on a Matt Cassell pass to Verran Tucker from the 11. (a Raiders challenge failed _ the second challenge within three plays after Cable got a Tony Moeaki score instead spotted at the 1.

“Bad call on my part. Really felt like we knew if we had a two-man side we could do it and if it was a seven-box we wanted to get out of it,’’ Cable said. “I called it, it’s on me but we didn’t execute it so it’s on me.’’

— Tackle Khalif Barnes, who had 6-yard reception against Seattle, added a 2-yard touchdown reception from Campbell after a short right roll for Oakland’s second touchdown.

“It was slow motion because I was like, ‘Oh, I have it (the touchdown).’ And I said, ‘Oh, I don’t have it.’ And I was kind of disappointed. I caught it, and I looked at the ground and I was like, ‘Am I in the end zone?’ I’m in the end zone,” Barnes said.

— Attendance was 61,075 tickets sold, and while it looked as if there would be a lot f empty seats as the game was beginning, fans were in the outer reaches of the stadium and there were no huge patches of empty seats which indicate blocks of tickets were bought by sponsors or the club itself.

In the end, Campbell thought fan support played a role in the win.

“It was exciting to see a packed stadium. I think the fans don’t know how important they were as a part of this win as the players. Because I don’t think we could have won without them,’’ Campbell said. “The noise that they made late in the game, the noise that they made on third down when Kansas City had the ball I think makes a difference.

“It brings energy to the team. That’s all guys talk about all week when we found it out it sold out, how excited they were to see a sellout and how excited to keep people coming to the stadium.’’