Raiders at Chiefs - Week 6 - Record: 6-0

Throughout the first half all I could think was, yep, they're going to do it to us again. The Raiders are going to beat us again at Arrowhead. It'll soon be seven straight home losses to these guys in as many years. We let Tyrell Pryor get untracked too often to make the plays he needed to make.

But then...

This is Arrowhead.

And we did have a packed house. And the Seattle fans went and showed us up a short while ago setting the record for loudest crowd noise. And that meant that our fans had to summarily take back that little bit of notoriety.

As the game progressed and the fans got louder, and louder, AND LOUDER, I was really doubting that they'd get the record, just knowing that the Seattle stadium's acoustics gave them an edge. Except that...

The Arrowhead fans got the record!

Thing is, whether or not they got the record is way less important than the fact that however loud they were, it was having a major effect on the Raiders offense.

Today, there is no question, the fans were definitely the 12th man out there. The Raiders offense had something like eight or nine pre-snap penalties against them -- delays of game or false starts. At one point in the 4th quarter, when I believe the score was still 14-7, the Raiders faced a 4th and 48. Penalty after penalty and sack after sack took them down. In fact sacks-wise we had ten on the day.

We are definitely a 4th quarter team, no question. For the three quarters we really slogged around on offense. We did take advantage of somewhat short field position to score our first two touchdowns. But the truth is --

I'm still kind of scared about our offense. Our offensive line is still not nearly as stiff as it should be on pass protection. Our receivers are just not getting untracked -- yet again. And today Alex Smith had a very sub-par game. After that 4th-and-48 Raiders series and we had a chance to do our standard grinding to close things out, Smith overshot an open Donnie Avery, then right after that threw very poorly to A.J. Jenkins on a gimme screen pass.

Our defense rescued us by making three very opportunistic picks, one by Quintin Demps earlier in the 3rd quarter that set up the go-ahead touchdown, one by Marcus Cooper that set up the field goal that sealed it, and another by Husain Abdullah he took to the house.

Yes, Smith still played very smart quarterback, but come on, unless we get crackin' with weapons other than Jamaal Charles we're going to experience a very painful sobering up. We do have games coming up against an underachieving Texans team, a deceptively good Browns team, a rejuvenated Bills team, and then, after the bye, that date with destiny -- Denver.
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