Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden and Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid speak after their game at Allegiant Stadium Sunday, Nov. 22, 2020.
Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021 | 2 a.m.
Success breeds imitation in the NFL. Like clockwork every new season, franchises incorporate ideas and schemes they adopted from the prior season’s best teams, especially those that advanced to the Super Bowl.
The Las Vegas Raiders aren’t immune to the trend. Raiders coach Jon Gruden and his staff will surely be watching Super Bowl 55 between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers with a close eye. They’ll be looking not only for reasons the two teams reached the sport’s pinnacle, but also ways they can replicate that success.
What could they learn? Here’s an idea from each team.
Kansas City Chiefs
The Raiders already based a lot of this past season’s plan on the Chiefs’ Super Bowl 54-winning ways. “Let’s be honest, the entire league is chasing the Kansas City Chiefs, but we’re in the same division,” Raiders general manager Mike Mayock famously admitted during last year’s NFL Draft. “They keep getting faster and more athletic, more dynamic every time you turn around. Other teams have to do the same.”
The Raiders-Chiefs arms race helped push Las Vegas to use three of its top four picks on the offensive side of the ball last year, despite it being more needy on defense. And from a macro perspective, it worked.
Las Vegas maintained an above-average offense for the second straight year and experienced a significant rise in “explosive” plays—completed passes that go for at least 20 yards and runs of at least 10 yards—from 21st to 8th in the NFL, according to sharpfootballstats.com. Still, No. 12 overall pick Henry Ruggs III didn’t quite have the impact some had expected.
The wide receiver out of Alabama had drawn comparisons to top Chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill, whom many describe as the fastest player in the league. Ruggs ran even faster than Hill at the combine—a 4.27-second 40-yard dash to best Hill’s 4.29.
But Las Vegas rarely got Ruggs into open space during the season the way Kansas City often does for Hill. That can be partially attributed to rookie growing pains, but a lack of creativity also contributed.
The Chiefs constantly manufacture ways to get Hill the ball through a wide variety of play designs. The Raiders essentially implanted Ruggs in their offense and hoped his ability would shine through.
Gruden’s offense wasn’t the main reason the Raiders missed the postseason this year, but for it to take the next step and become one of the league’s best, he’ll need more creativity. And copying some of the Chiefs’ schemes—rather than just their personnel choices—could be a good step in that direction.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
What if? It would be easy for the Raiders’ brass to look at the Buccaneers and wonder that, considering Las Vegas was linked heavily to quarterback Tom Brady before his free agency began last March, and ended with him in Tampa Bay.
But that would be foolish. The offense was not what ailed the Raiders this season. Plus, the Buccaneers had a set of skill players few teams in the league could match. There’s a reason Brady handpicked them after spending 20 years with the New England Patriots.
The Raiders could really learn from the Buccaneers on defense, however. Much like Las Vegas, Tampa Bay was a perennially underperforming stop unit until two seasons ago, when Todd Bowles arrived as defensive coordinator. Bowles modernized the Buccaneers’ defense, going largely to a “positionless” approach that’s starting to sweep through the NFL. The good news for Las Vegas is that new defensive coordinator Gus Bradley used some similar concepts the past two years with the Los Angeles Chargers.
The Raiders might also have some of the necessary personnel to fit Bradley’s new system, particularly at linebacker, if Cory Littleton can rebound from a rough first year in Las Vegas. At his best, he’s top-notch as both an intermediate coverage option and an open-field tackler.
The Raiders will need to bulk up their secondary. Bowles empowers lanky and speedy defensive backs like Carlton Davis, Jamel Dean and Sean Murphy-Bunting to be aggressive and win one-on-one matchups with opposing top receivers. Trayvon Mullen is the only Las Vegas cornerback who has shown he might be capable of something similar, but he’s been inconsistent through his first two years.
Tampa Bay blitzes frequently, an element neither Bradley nor the Raiders have fully embraced. Bradley’s Chargers ranked last in the league in blitz rate each of the past two seasons. But the Raiders have struggled to bring pressure with their front four, so some tweaks might be necessary. Bowles’ adjustments with the Buccaneers have largely worked, and Bradley would be wise to study them.
This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.
