Josh McDaniels hasn’t given up hope on Raiders offense

The Raiders are nowhere near where they need to be offensively to have a successful season.

But the coaches responsible for that group don’t think it’s going to require any kind of massive overhaul to get there.

“I always think we’re close,” coach Josh McDaniels said of a unit ranked 27th in yards per game and 30th in points per game in the NFL.

His optimism stems not just from blind trust, but what he has seen his players do so often on the practice field.

“You see the execution, you see the good plays, and obviously you see a lot of intentions to do the right things,” he said. “We have the right mindset. We understand what we’re trying to get done. We have a lot of good players. There’s a fine line between not doing good enough and really doing well. And sometimes, it’s six plays or whatever it might be, you change the result.”

McDaniels is not suggesting it’s as easy as completing six deep touchdown passes a game. That’s a ridiculous notion. But finishing one block on the edge could turn a 3-yard run into a 25-yard explosive play, or one extra broken tackle by a receiver converts a third down and helps turn a field goal drive into a touchdown opportunity.

“Football is a mysterious game sometimes,” McDaniels said. “Our players feel like we can do so much better than what we’ve done. … Every game feels hard right now whether we win or lose. They’re all feeling the same way because we’re kind of nip and tuck, it’s right down to the wire, or in (Sunday’s) case, we just lose control of it in the third and fourth quarter.”

Offensive coordinator Mick Lombardi echoed the sentiment. The team did not practice Wednesday, but he’s looking forward to getting back on the field Thursday to begin preparations for the “Monday Night Football” matchup at the Detroit Lions because he remains optimistic the offense is ready to click.

“We’re right there,” Lombardi said. “I’m waiting for that breakout game because we have a chance to get it because I see how close we are.”

It’s a nice thought, but McDaniels acknowledged it’s just talk until the Raiders do something about it.

“At the end of the day, you did what you did, and we called what we called,” McDaniels said. “We need to put together a performance that’s representative of what we think we can be. We’re searching for that, and there’s no shortcut to it. We have got to have 11 guys on every play trying to do the right thing, which I think we do. We got to have more execution on a consistent basis against good teams.”

Lombardi said one of the keys is to not just wait for an explosive play to happen to jump-start the offense. Instead, there must be a concerted effort to sustain drives and finish them with touchdowns instead of field goals. Then, when the chances are there, hit the big gains.

But the consistency of the long possessions will be what allows the team to get to the next level.

“Like we get the long pass interference call to Tre Tucker in the game (Sunday) and then we can’t convert that into six points,” Lombardi said. “We’ve got to take advantage of the big play opportunities that we get, and then the drives that we do sustain, we can’t mess up with penalties and turnovers in the red area. It’s kind of been our crux the entire season.”

That has certainly shown up in the results. The Raiders haven’t lost faith that an offensive breakout is on the horizon, but they can’t wait much longer to get there.

Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.