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Two months ago, suggesting the Rams could be the Raiders’ get-right game would have been grounds for having your football judgment questioned.
Perhaps your sobriety, too.
Yet here we are.
The Raiders head into their Week 7 matchup at 3-3, carrying a three-game losing streak and the frustration of a team that can see the difference between competing and winning but keeps stumbling over it.
The Rams arrive at 2-4, dragging around the weight of Super Bowl expectations and looking increasingly like a team caught in one of those maddening seasons when every solution uncovers another problem.
A game that once looked like something the Raiders would simply have to endure suddenly looks like something they need to seize.
Funny how quickly the NFL can rearrange the furniture.
For all their recent frustration, the Raiders remain one of the league’s more pleasant surprises. The rebuild being directed by Tom Brady, general manager John Spytek and head coach Klint Kubiak has produced a team capable of making established contenders uncomfortable.
That matters.
So does the fact that making opponents uncomfortable has stopped producing victories.
The Raiders lost home games to the Chiefs and Bills by a combined six points. Sandwiched between those heartbreakers was a humbling loss to the Patriots, a reminder that their margin for error remains painfully thin.
They responded to that embarrassment by pushing Buffalo to the finish.
Now they need to finish something themselves.
Asked what he wants to improve, Kubiak needed only four words.
“Close games out.”
There is the assignment. No elaborate explanation necessary.
The Raiders have shown enough to move the conversation beyond whether they belong on the field with good teams. The question now is whether they can make the handful of plays that send those teams home with a loss.
Tre Tucker understands the distinction better than most.
“I’ve been a part of some games where we weren’t very competitive, and just felt like you were out there, just participating,” the Raiders wide receiver said. “This is more of competition, competing. This is what the NFL is about.”
That represents meaningful progress for a franchise that has spent too many Sundays being somebody else’s convenient victory.
But Tucker also understands where that conversation must go next.
“We’re in all of them, but great teams close,” he said. “So, that’s what we got to get figured out.”
The Rams offer an opportunity to start.
This was supposed to be the established contender showing the rebuilding franchise how much further it had to travel. The Rams were the popular preseason Super Bowl pick. The Raiders were trying to establish credibility.
Six weeks later, the Raiders have the better record.
That does not automatically make them the better team. It does make the summer’s assumptions irrelevant.
The Raiders cannot afford to play the Rams’ reputation. Nor can they assume a 2-4 record means Los Angeles will conveniently cooperate with their plans to stop the bleeding.
A struggling contender can still make a rebuilding team pay for every mistake.
And the Raiders have supplied too many of those.
Their running game remains inconsistent. Their offense too often has to work painstakingly for its points. Their defense has shown how quickly a promising afternoon can unravel.
Solving everything by kickoff is unrealistic. Making fewer mistakes when the game is being decided should not be.
“It’s just about making plays. You got to make plays and be smart and manage the game well,” Kirk Cousins said. “And if you do that, you’d like to think that you give yourself a chance to close it out in the fourth quarter.”
The challenge is correcting what has gone wrong without abandoning what has made the Raiders competitive.
Cousins is not advocating an overhaul.
“I think the only part you change is when you go back and see where we got to be better, and you emphasize that during the week,” he said. “But we just got to go back to work and just put the work in and expect that if you do that, that the breaks will fly your way.”
The Raiders could use a favorable bounce. They also need to create more of their own good fortune.
Finish a drive with a touchdown. Avoid the penalty that wipes out a productive play. Make the tackle that forces a punt.
A win gets them back above .500 and ends a three-game skid. A loss leaves them at 3-4, facing another week of explaining how much closer they are than their record suggests.
This is no referendum on the rebuild. But the habits that eventually define it get established in games like this.
Two months ago, the Rams looked like a measuring stick.
Today, they look beatable.
The Raiders have spent enough time showing they can hang around against good teams.
It is time to send one home with the regrets.