What We Learned from the Raiders' MNF Loss to Cowboys

After dropping their fourth consecutive game and their eighth loss in the last nine games, the Las Vegas Raiders are headed nowhere, fast.

After 10 games, there is no denying that this Raiders team is what they are, and that is not a very good football team. The unfortunate part is, Las Vegas could at least be competitive if the offensive line was at least serviceable, but they are far from that. The Raiders simply do not have the answers.

Lessons Learned

Las Vegas is a long ways away from being a competitive team. They will likely have to wait until next season to take the next step, if not longer. Nick Shook of NFL.com analyzed the Raiders' loss to the Cowboys and noted his biggest takeaway of the night for Las Vegas.

"Las Vegas lost Jackson Powers-Johnson to injury during the Raiders' Thursday night loss in Denver during Week 10, prompting the Raiders to slide starting center Jordan Meredith out to guard and replacing Meredith with undrafted Clemson producton Will Putnam Monday night," Shook said.

"The changes came from a place of necessity and predictably didn't produce encouraging results from a team that already had problems up front. Dallas' defense -- a unit that has endured plenty of its own struggles in 2025 -- harassed Geno Smith often Monday night, sacking him three times in the first half.

"Rookie first-rounder Ashton Jeanty had absolutely nowhere to run, wiping out any ambition of establishing the ground game and forcing Smith to lean on checkdowns to Jeanty just to get him the ball. Their struggles hit rock bottom in the fourth quarter when Jeanty was hit behind the line of scrimmage (again) in the end zone for a safety, perfectly capturing how the Raiders' deficiencies up front have kneecapped this entire offense.

Following the Raiders' loss to the Cowboys, Carroll explained what went wrong in the blowout loss on Monday Night Football.

"This was a rough night. We didn't get stuff done the way we wanted to on either side of the ball. We were excited about the chance and wanted to go after these guys and go get them. You saw we were really aggressive throwing the ball in the first half. It got us out of balance run-pass wise, I know that, but we had so many good opportunities, and Geno [Smith] was able to find his guys on the actions and all that,” Carroll said.

Las Vegas Raiders Coach Pete Carroll | Darrell Craig Harris, On SI

“It got us in the red area, and then we didn't function well. We got sacked a little bit. We got hit a little bit, and it didn't work out. I was really disappointed that we didn't stop them more. There was a space in that game, three or four drives in a row, and we couldn't get off the field. It wasn't all third down stuff. They did a nice job. They have a really good offense, and they do a nice job with it."

Las Vegas Raiders Pete Carroll | Darrell Craig Harris, On SI

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