Before Tom Cruise became part athlete, part actor, there was a time there where he took swings.
He plays an Andrew Tate prototype in Magnolia, he’s a less criminal Harvey Weinstein in Tropic Thunder, and he’s a sharky contract killer in Collateral. He used to try a few things, and in the films listed, the things he tried worked.
And because the swings were so big, the rewards were astonishing.
Just as he operated the Seahawks’ offence last year, Klint Kubiak has the entire Raiders organisation rolling on the same principle. On both sides of the ball, and in true Raider fashion, they’re taking swings baby.
It’s working beautifully.
Last year, because the Seahawks had such a great defence, Kubiak was granted the space to take shots all over the field. Sam Darnold, always a high-risk player, was allowed to lean into the variance.
For the year, the Seahawks were 12th in drop back EPA which would have been higher if Darnold didn’t have 20 turnovers. But those turnovers were part of the point. Kubiak clearly took the view that you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
The way Kubiak did it was to get into heavy personnel, often with two or three tight ends on the field, and have Darnold chuck it down the field after trying and failing to run the ball. Usually, the ball went to Jaxson Smith-Njigba, who spent most of the season levitating above the competition on the way to 1,800 yards and 10 touchdowns.
Statistically, the Seahawks weren’t dominant down to down with just a 45% offensive success rate, but they did get big chunks in the passing game. Darnold set a career high in intended air yards per pass attempt and the Seahawks were third in play action passing yards.
That formula of no risk it, no biscuit quarterback and coaching alongside a historic defence was enough for the Seahawks to win the Super Bowl and for Kubiak to get his first head-coaching job with the Raiders.
In that job, Kubiak has taken the same approach to a far less talented roster and has driven them to a 3-0 start, with this week’s win against the Saints the most impressive of the bunch. The only difference is circumstance. In Seattle, the offence could take swings because the defence is so good. In Vegas, everyone has to take swings because the game needs to be equalised.
Offensively, the Raiders have a similar formula to Kubiak’s Seahawks with the featured player being Brock Bowers, who just returned this week. As a Bowers fantasy owner who traded him when the injury news hit the ticker, I could be taking this news better.
In any case, and even without Bowers for two of three games so far this year, the Raiders are eighth in snaps played with 12 personnel (the first number is the amount of running backs, and the second is the amount of tight ends on the field) and are seventh in EPA/pass out of them. With Bowers back and essentially replacing JSN as the key piece of the passing game, you can feel the plan taking place. Like Seattle, they are generally poor at running the ball but use the heavy personnel almost as a secondary play action fake, and chucking it downfield out of that.
Bowers, because of his deployment, complicates that even further because the way he was used in his first game was basically as a receiver, as he took just 8 of his 33 snaps out of a traditional tight alignment. How you match personnel when you’re dealing with a monster of his proportions is truly beyond me, especially when the other tight end Michael Mayer is also viable in the passing game.
It’s working even with a more traditionally risk averse quarterback in Kirk Cousins, who at 38 just doesn’t have the arm he used to. Even still, he’s thrown three picks and is currently averaging a career high 8.6 intended air yards per attempt purely because of the structure of the offence and Kubiak’s instilling of a “take a swing” mentality. It’s been been Kirk’s Digger moment: a late career swing at something exciting.
It’s unsurprising, that Kubiak would bring his risk-forward approach to his offence. That he, as a first year head coach has been able to instil that swing-taking approach across the organisation and onto the defence has been remarkable, however.
The Raiders have forced 9 turnovers already this season. Defensive coordinator Rob Leonard has them forcing a turnover on 25% of all defensive snaps. 18% led the league last year. Clearly that rate is unsustainable, but what Leonard is doing isn’t. Leonard doesn’t send more than 4 often, only sending 15 blitzes for the season, 22nd in the league.
It’s Brian Flores type of stuff while sending much less heat than Flores sends. The Malcolm Koonce fumble is a good example of that. While he sent 5 rushers, Leonard dropped the nose tackles into coverage and overloaded the edges that got Koonce free. At the same time, his corners were in good coverage and didn’t allow the flat player to get free by staggering the coverage so Saints’ quarterback Tyler Shough has to hold onto the ball.
The structural advantages that the scheme creates also means that their one defensive star Maxx Crosby can fit into the scheme rather than doing everything for the Raiders, with just 1.5 sacks this year.
While the Raiders are far from a dominant defence down to down, sitting 14th in dropback success rate overall, they’re second in the league in EPA/play because they, like the offence, makes splash plays.
How sustainable all of this is for the Raiders is a big question. While the turnovers are created by Leonard more than by happenstance, and while Kubiak has proven himself a genius at forcing big plays, this is a Raiders team with a few truly good pieces and some inbuilt schematic advantages.
While they’re probably not going 17-0, this is a team designed in a lab to use the variance of the game to its advantage. It wants the variance because it thinks it’s an equaliser, and has at least one difference maker on either side of the ball.
Like Tom Cruise, they’re set up to keep taking swings.