Raiders coach Josh McDaniels still has no answers after latest embarrassing loss

CHICAGO — It has to be frustrating being asked the same questions over and over again when you don’t know the answer.

For Las Vegas Raiders coach Josh McDaniels, there are two of them.

Why can’t you score points when you have Davante Adams and Josh Jacobs on your team?

Why does your team look unprepared in embarrassing losses?

The second one doesn’t come up as much, but it’s been an issue often enough and came up again Sunday after a 30-12 loss to a Chicago Bears team many left for dead.

The Raiders scored three points over the first 47 minutes of the game, and their plucky defense lacked its usual juice in falling to 3-4.

McDaniels wasn’t a fan of the theory that his team wasn’t prepared.

“No, we had a chance to go down there and take the lead,” McDaniels said, pointing to the start of the game in which the Raiders forced a three-and-out and then drove down the field before Daniel Carlson missed a 41-yard field goal.

“I didn’t think it was that we weren’t ready to play,” McDaniels continued. “The guys had energy and juice. We lost control of the line of scrimmage, and then we’re playing the game backwards, and that is not a formula that has suited us.

“We need to figure that out, how we can do that better.”

Last season, McDaniels lost to the Indianapolis Colts in what would be former center Jeff Saturday’s only win in eight games as an interim coach. The Raiders also lost to a really bad Los Angeles Rams team that plugged in Baker Mayfield three days after grabbing him off the street.

On Sunday, the Raiders took on Bears rookie Tyson Bagent, whose last start came in the Division II semifinals last season against Colorado School of Mines. He went 19-for-34 for 165 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions and was sacked eight times in a 44-13 loss that day.

But the Orediggers of Golden, Colo., tackled better than the Raiders did Sunday.

Bagent didn’t break a nervous sweat, leading three touchdown drives without turning the ball over and running for three first downs. The Bears never trailed and the game was not as close as the final score indicates.

“We got punched in the mouth,” safety Marcus Epps said. “I’m disappointed but we just have to get back to it. We have a lot of football left.”

Safety Tre’von Moehrig, who had played well this season, politely declined an interview request.

Cornerback Marcus Peters especially struggled on Sunday. He got trampled on a 5-yard touchdown catch by D’Onta Foreman that made it 21-3 late in the third quarter. But at least he tried on that one. There was a third-and-1 play earlier that drive where Peters short-armed a tackle attempt and wound up giving Tyler Scott a pat on the arm before he ran for 6 yards and a first down.

The Raiders’ bad tackling might be on general manager Dave Ziegler’s moves the last two years more than the defensive coaches, and it has been bugging McDaniels for a while.

“When you give up that many yards after contact … there were opportunities for us to make a stand for 1- or 2-yard gains and we missed way too many tackles,” he said. “We were trying to create some third-and-longs to put the kid under pressure, but that never really materialized.”

The Bears’ game plan took advantage of that by throwing short, mixing in some runs and hoping for the best. The Raiders wish they had a plan that good.

The best they could come up with was to throw Adams the ball as much as possible to shut him up, run Jacobs (11 carries for 35 yards) into the line of scrimmage and tell 37-year-old quarterback Brian Hoyer not to turn the ball over.

Hoyer threw two interceptions and was probably lucky it wasn’t more as he locked in on his first reads.

It turns out that his winless record in his previous 12 NFL starts was not a fluke.

Aidan O’Connell came in for garbage time and the rookie threw an interception and then a touchdown pass.

Adams has been constructively complaining about his lack of usage, and McDaniels/Hoyer threw him the ball seven times in the first quarter. They were short passes, and Adams caught five of them and got 48 yards out of them.

That box checked, Adams didn’t get another pass thrown his way until there was 3:22 left in the third quarter. He finished with seven catches (on 12 targets) for 57 yards.

“To put this all to bed, we always try and get the ball to our best guys,” McDaniels said. “Sometimes the defense takes those opportunities away. Other times, they don’t. It just so happened there were a handful of things early in the game where we had the opportunities to get it to him.

“Then they did some things with the coverage.”

Hoyer is clearly a rhythm passer; late in the second quarter, he threw to Jakobi Meyers seven times in a span of 10 plays. Meyers, who hadn’t touched the ball before that, caught four of them for 33 yards, and the Raiders got on the board with a field goal.

McDaniels didn’t really consider making a quarterback change at halftime. And it’s entirely possible fans overreacted to O’Connell’s success in the preseason and that Hoyer is a better quarterback.

That’s probably not the case, but it wouldn’t have mattered who played quarterback Sunday. The Raiders are averaging 16 points on the season, and the defense likely overachieved in its two recent home wins over the Green Bay Packers and New England Patriots.

Sunday was a dose of reality, a familiar one the Raiders had hoped they were past in Year 2 of the McDaniels/Ziegler era. They can lose to anybody and look terrible doing it, and they are further away from being a playoff team than when the new regime arrived on the heels of a wild-card playoff appearance.

“It was s—– football,” defensive end Maxx Crosby said. “We didn’t play good enough in any phase. … It was an embarrassment. Everyone’s gotta get better, players and coaches. It’s as simple as that.”

Just before Crosby was dressed and talked to reporters, owner Mark Davis took a slow walk through the locker room to meet with McDaniels. It happens after every game, but it didn’t seem like Davis was going to be a fun person to chat with. He is doing his best to be patient with McDaniels and Ziegler while his WNBA team stacks up titles, but waiting can be painful.

Jimmy Garoppolo is expected to return next week and maybe they bounce back against the Detroit Lions, but the Raiders still seem like a rudderless ship just waiting for the next big wave to hit.

(Top photo: Charles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press)

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