Super Bowl week is here and the Kansas City Chiefs will take on the Buccaneers in Tampa Bay. The Raiders are certainly familiar with these two teams as they played both teams during the regular season, defeating the Chiefs in Kansas City.
While they were able to hang with these teams in the regular season, the Raiders just couldn’t find any consistency in the second half of the year, losing five of their final seven games. Their inability to string together wins and handle success has been a problem under the Jon Gruden era.
So just how far away is this team from actually being a legit contender in the AFC? Well, that probably depends on who you ask. In a recent article by ESPN’s 32 beat writers, they ranked how far away each team is from competing for a Super Bowl. For the Raiders, the answer was three years away as they were a team named on the “upswing” in the AFC.
However, ESPN’s Paul Guiterrez admitted that new defensive coordinator Gus Bradley could be an X-factor and could speed up that timeline. Here is a snippet of his thoughts on the new defensive coordinator in Las Vegas.
“(Bradley) has some building blocks in defensive ends Maxx Crosby and Clelin Ferrell, linebackers Nick Kwiatkoski and Cory Littleton and defensive backs Trayvon Mullen and Johnathan Abram. How quickly they adapt to a new scheme in Bradley’s defense and what pieces the Raiders add this offseason will tell the tale.”
With the Raiders already having a top-10 offense, even an average to slightly below average defense would likely be enough for the Raiders to make the playoffs. And if they can create more turnovers and give the offense an occasional short field, there is no reason this team can’t win double-digit games every year.
The Raiders are certainly a year or two away from competing with teams like the Chiefs and the Bills in the AFC. But with a strong offseason and draft, they can close that gap by a significant margin.
