A slew of injuries and miscues continue to plague a Las Vegas Raiders team desperately trying to get out of a bad funk, dropping Sunday’s game, 29-19, to the Denver Broncos.
Though they came into Week 12 down multiple starters on offense and defense, the Silver and Black found a way to make things competitive. They netted over 350 yards of offense for the first time this season and held a lead going into halftime for the first time since Week 1. Their 13 first-half points scored were also a season high.
On defense, the squad kept the Broncos to three field goals in the first half. Rookie quarterback Bo Nix was held a 59.5 completion percentage, coming off an AFC Offensive Player of the Week showing in Week 11, while the Broncos offense went just 6-of-15 on third down.
“Bo Nix is a pretty good football player. … We got to him early,” Antonio Pierce said following the game. “I thought we did a good job of trying to disrupt him. The mindset was to be aggressive and I thought we did do that but when they had to make a play, he made plays for them.”
Things went astray in the second half as the Raiders lost the turnover margin by -2 and went 1-of-5 in the red zone. It went from bad to worse as quarterback Gardner Minshew II reportedly suffered a broken collarbone late in the fourth quarter with the team trailing 26-19.
“We’ll know more, but it doesn’t look good,” Pierce said of Minshew’s injury.
“We’ll see what happens tomorrow,” Pierce added. “Looks like [Aidan O’Connell]’s getting better. … Obviously, we’ve got a short week, play on Friday, travel on Thursday, so we have to make that decision very quickly.”