Takeaways from the Raiders' Hot Start to the Season

The Las Vegas Raiders battled back from a halftime defecit to beat the New England Patriots on Sunday. A solid second half helped the Raiders secure the win.

Impressive First Showing

FOX Sports analyzed each of Sunday's games, noting important takeaways from each. They believe rookie running back Ashton Jeanty had a disappointing debut but are a dangerous team with Geno Smith under center.

Smith threw for 362 yards in his first start with the Raiders and was a critical part of why the Raiders won on Sunday.

"The Raiders’ big offseason of change brought in coach Pete Carroll, quarterback Geno Smith and running back Ashton Jeanty — among others. Those three were going to work with star tight end Brock Bowers to be the bedrock of this new-look offense. And even with Bowers hitting the century mark and promptly suffering a knee injury, Las Vegas' offense looked solid behind Smith," FOX Sports said.

"It doesn’t look like they have every question answered. The running game needs to get better, with Jeanty finishing with 19 carries for 38 yards and one touchdown. There’s no deep passing game. But even so, Smith looked dangerous when attacking the intermediate areas with Bowers, Michael Mayer and Jakobi Meyers."

Following the win, Pete Carroll raved about his quarterback's performance against the Patriots.

"He's a star player in the NFL. He's been doing this for a long time. That was a normal response by him to just not worry about it. We took a couple of sacks on pressures that we didn't need to take. I wish we'd have gotten rid of the football instead of getting hit," Carroll said.

"But other than that -- and there was a couple of penalties in there, it felt like that made a difference and we were 2nd-and-20 or something like that, or 1st-and-20. Really hard to play from there. But other than that, shoot, I thought we were fine. I wish we'd have run the ball better. They did a nice job up front against us. We didn't get much going.

"We stayed with it enough to give us the play passes that we needed to throw the football around. Jakobi [Meyers] had a different game running after the catch and getting pounded and then making more yards. I thought that was special. Tre [Tucker]'s touchdown was perfect with the protection they picked it up versus a pressure, and we hit a touchdown pass. So, a lot of good things happened across the board, and we're really happy about it.

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