3 Takeaways from Raiders' Week 11 Loss

Four weeks ago, the Las Vegas Raiders were heading into their bye as the AFC West leaders. Since then, things haven't been going their way. And that continued Sunday, when they hosted the Cincinnati Bengals at Allegiant Stadium.

The Raiders got off to a slow start and could never get going, as they fell to the Bengals 32-13. It was Las Vegas' third consecutive loss, which has it at 5-5 and in third place in the AFC West. The Raiders haven't won a game since beating the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 7.

Entering the fourth quarter, Las Vegas' offense hadn't produced much, and it faced a 13-6 deficit. Then, Cincinnati used a 19-point final quarter to put the game away, which included scoring 16 unanswered points over the final 5 minutes, 3 seconds.

Here are three takeaways from the Raiders' Week 11 loss.

The Raiders only had the ball for 22:40, and during that time, they struggled to get much going. They ended up with only 278 total yards and 13 first downs, and they also committed a pair of turnovers. Las Vegas' 11 possessions resulted in four punts, an interception, a lost fumble, two field goals, a touchdown and the clock running out twice (at the half and at the end).

Neither Josh Jacobs nor Kenyan Drake made much of an impact, as the Raiders rushed for only 72 yards. Derek Carr completed 19 of his 27 passing attempts, but he still had only 215 yards and one touchdown. And Las Vegas' pair of turnovers both came in the final 4:51 as it tried to make a comeback.

"It's a broken record from a week ago," Raiders interim head coach Rich Bisaccia said, per The Athletic's Tashan Reed. "We could never get in sync."

During the three-game losing streak, Las Vegas has scored only 43 total points. Because the offense isn't moving down the field well, the defense is being forced to be out there for extended period of times, which eventually led to Cincinnati putting up a bunch of points late Sunday.

Moving forward, the Raiders offense needs to overall play better, as they're currently not performing well in any facet of their attack.

Why couldn't Las Vegas put together long drives, and how come only three of its possessions resulted in points? Well, a major reason was the Raiders' performance on third downs, as they converted only one of their seven attempts.

It's hard to win a game when you're only successful on third down once. It's even harder when the other team is converting at a 50 percent rate, which is what the Bengals did as they moved the chains on eight of their 16 third-down attempts.

Carr had no trouble taking the blame for Las Vegas' third-down struggles on offense.

"We're not doing good enough on third down; we're not doing good enough in the red zone. It's my fault," Carr said, per Danny Webster of the Associated Press.

But Carr isn't the sole reason the Raiders weren't moving the chains, and he wasn't the reason they couldn't stop the Bengals from doing so. So this is another area in which Las Vegas needs to get better, on both sides of the ball, in order to get better results.

If the Raiders are going to end their losing streak in Week 12, they're going to need to put their most recent defeat behind them quickly. That's because they're going on the road to face the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving, so it will be a short week of preparation for them.

In the big picture, Las Vegas also doesn't have much time to get its season back on track and to avoid falling out of playoff contention. The Raiders have seven games remaining, and six of them are against teams that are .500 or better. The only upcoming opponent with a losing record is Washington, which has won two straight games to improve to 4-6.

So Las Vegas will face its fair amount of tests down the stretch, and there could be plenty of challenging matchups if it doesn't start to play better. However, it has only one fewer loss than the AFC West-leading Kansas City Chiefs, and it's only one game out of a wild-card spot.

The Raiders can stay in the playoff hunt and make a push into the postseason down the stretch. But it would be a big help if they can quickly turn the page and knock off the Cowboys on Thursday.