As the clock ticked down in overtime of Sunday night’s Raiders-Chargers game, fans began to think that the impossible was truly going to happen in the final game of the regular season.
Before the game started, there was plenty of talk about a scenario in which, if other games fell in line, the two AFC West rivals could just kneel the ball multiple times and play for a tie so they both would advance to the playoffs.
Though the two sides didn’t kneel down the entirety of the game, it appeared there would be a tie anyway after Las Vegas running back Josh Jacobs rushed for 7 yards near midfield and both sides allowed the clock to wind down. Everything appeared to be falling into place until Chargers coach Brandon Staley called a timeout.
After the timeout, Jacobs rushed 10 yards and Daniel Carlson drilled a 47-yard field goal with no time remaining. The Raiders moved on to the playoffs via a 35-32 win and Los Angeles went home to end the 2021 regular season.
After the game, Derek carr seemed to allude to the fact that the team was going to play for a tie.
“It definitely did, obviously, but we knew, no matter what, we didn’t want a tie. We wanted to win the football game,” Carr told NBC Sports’ Michele Tafoya. “Obviously, if you tie, you’re in, all those things, but my mindset, all day, I even was texting with Aaron Rodgers this morning. My mindset was to make sure that we were the only team moving on after this.”
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Then, Raiders head coach Rich Bisaccia also seemed to state the same thing.
“Then we had the big run through there. And when we got the big run and got us in what we thought was advantageous field goal position for us, we were going to take the field goal and try to win,” Bisaccia said. “But we were certainly talking about it on the sideline.
We wanted to see if they were going to call a timeout or not on that run. They didn’t, so we thought they’re thinking the same thing. And then we popped a run in there and gave us a chance to kick the field goal and win it. So we were certainly talking about it.”
Staley said after the game that his mindset was to make Carlson’s kick as long as possible and that he wanted to bring out the proper defensive personnel to stop a run by the Raiders.
“We felt like they were going to run the ball, so we wanted to get our best 11 personnel run defense in, make that substitution so that we could get a play where we were deep in the field goal (range),” Staley said.
Now, the Chargers will have to watch the rival Raiders take on the Bengals in the first round of the playoffs while Los Angeles waits for next season.
