The best case scenario for the Oakland Raiders at season’s end will be finishing with four-game winning streak and an 8-8 record. Although winning the final four games of the season is a stretch and most teams with a 4-8 record give up at this point in time, head coach Dennis Allen maintains that the team has no intention to call it a season via Scott Bair of CSNBayArea.com:
“There is absolutely nothing that would give me any indication that there is anybody in that locker room that has any give up in them,” Allen said. “I’ve said this from the very beginning, I still believe this: I like this football team. I like the guys that are in that locker room. I understand where we’re at from a record standpoint, but these guys have gone out there and given us everything that they’ve had every single week. I continue to expect to see that for the last four weeks of the season.”
With so many of the team’s best players on both sides of the football becoming free agents in the off-season and a lot of changes potentially on the horizon for the Raiders, the fact that this team still has some fight left in them is impressive.
Despite winning only four games this year, the Raiders record doesn’t dictate how good this football team really is. Plenty of games this season were lost by a small margin and could’ve easily been wins if one or two plays had gone their way. Oakland lost three games by four points with those losses coming against the Indianapolis Colts (21-17), New York Giants (24-20) and Tennessee Titans (23-19).
Even the loss to the Dallas Cowboys (31-24) on Thanksgiving Day was a winnable game for the Raiders. Oakland had a 14-point led against Tony Romo and company before letting it slip through their fingers in the second half at AT&T Stadium.
Needless to say, the Raiders have played much better than anticipated this season resulting in a potentially bright future ahead for the struggling franchise.
