The Las Vegas Raiders walked into SoFi Stadium on Sunday and beat the Los Angeles Chargers, 26-14, ending a seven-game road losing streak and snapping a five-game skid against their AFC West rival.
The win put them at 2-0 for the first time since 2021, and they did it without Brock Bowers and without the ground game that carried them in Week 1. That last part is the point: When one part of the new scheme stalled, another part showed up.
The air attack gave Las Vegas a Plan B that actually worked…
Ashton Jeanty ran 21 times for 48 yards, and the Raiders finished with 57 rushing yards as a team. That is not the formula that beat Miami. Holes were tighter, as the Chargers stacked the box and dared Las Vegas to throw. Kirk Cousins took the dare.
He completed 19 of 29 passes for 253 yards and three touchdowns. The one interception was the kind of play that lands on the quarterback’s line and not on his conscience. It was not a forced ball into double coverage or a late throw across his body, but a messy afternoon play that did not change who he was the rest of the night. What mattered was the rest of the tape: a veteran who still has the arm to push the ball down the field when the run is stuck in the mud.
Tre Tucker was the clearest proof, finishing with five catches for 119 yards, including a 40-yard touchdown on a deep shot that left him so open he had time to turn and wait. That was not a checkdown. It was Cousins seeing a busted look and putting the ball where only his receiver could finish it. Later, a long completion to Tucker set up Matt Gay’s 59-yard field goal as the half expired. Those two plays flipped the game from a slog into a lead Las Vegas never fully gave back.
Then there was Cody White…
Elevated from the practice squad a day earlier, White caught two passes, and both were touchdowns. The first was a 13-yard twisting grab that put the Raiders back in front, 17-14, late in the third quarter. The second was an 11-yard score with just under three minutes left after the defense had handed the offense a short field. That is how a team wins on the road when Jeanty is averaging 2.3 yards a carry: scheme people open, trust the quarterback to throw them open and let a practice-squad call-up become the difference in a division game.
Cousins is now the first Raiders quarterback since Ken Stabler in 1976 to throw three touchdown passes in each of the first two games. The yardage was not gaudy by modern standards, but the timing was. When Los Angeles took its only lead, 14-10, on Justin Herbert’s 10-yard toss to Oronde Gadsden, Las Vegas answered with an 11-play drive that ended in White’s first score, the mark of a quarterback managing a game rather than surviving one.
The run game will have to come back. This offense is built to live on it. Sunday showed it does not have to die without it.
The defense spent four quarters making Herbert play left-handed…
The Chargers outgained the Raiders and held the ball longer, but none of that showed up in the final score, because Las Vegas took the ball away and never let Herbert get comfortable.
Herbert finished 15 of 27 for 192 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions. The Chargers put the ball on the ground six times and lost one of those fumbles, the one that mattered. Nakobe Dean punched it out of Omarion Hampton near midfield with under four minutes left, and Jeremy Chinn recovered. Three plays later, White was in the end zone and the game was 24-14. That is not luck. That is a defense that had been hitting Herbert and his backs all afternoon until something finally came loose.
Rookie safety Hezekiah Masses made the kind of debut people will remember. A tip-drill interception early robbed Los Angeles of a chunk play when David Njoku could not secure a ball that should have moved the chains. Masses was in the mix again later as Herbert kept trying to force throws into coverage that would not break. The secondary stayed attached, and receivers did not find the easy windows Herbert is used to seeing. When he held the ball, the rush arrived, as Malcolm Koonce and the rest of the front collected three sacks. The Chargers’ day ended with a safety after a holding call on Joe Alt in the end zone, an ugly finish for them but a fitting one for a defense that spent four quarters crowding the pocket.
Different QB, same result for the Raiders…
The coverage was sticky in the same way it was against Miami, but the difference this week was the opponent. Herbert is a different problem than Malik Willis; he can make a defense pay if it guesses wrong. Leonard’s group did not guess. They rushed with a plan, rotated, and looked behind it and made Herbert throw into traffic. Hampton still ran for 94 yards and a short touchdown, and that is fine. The Chargers’ best player on the ground did not beat Las Vegas. The turnovers did.
Two interceptions and a strip near midfield is how a defense wins a game; it does not fully control the stat sheet. The Raiders were 4 of 14 on third down, but they did not need to be perfect. They needed to be violent and disciplined at the same time, and for the second straight week, they were.
Related: The Raiders’ Pass Rush Is Dominating Without One Major Trick
Kubiak and Leonard called a game that fit the night they were actually having…
This is where the win stops looking like a fluke.
Klint Kubiak could not lean on the run the way he did in the opener, so he used what little run game he had as a setup rather than as the main course. Play-action still mattered because Jeanty was on the field enough to make Los Angeles respect the box. The deep shot to Tucker came off that tension. The crossing and sit-down throws to White came off the same idea: move the defense a step the wrong way, then throw where the help used to be.
Even when the yards were not piling up, Kubiak kept the Chargers on their heels. The two-minute field-goal drive before the half was a clinic in using clock and field position. The answer drive after Gadsden’s touchdown was a clinic in not panicking. The three-play burst after Hampton’s fumble was a clinic in punching a team that had already started to wobble. That is play calling with a pulse, and it is also play calling that trusts the people on the field: Tucker on the post, White on the fade and the sit route, and Cousins with the ball in his hands instead of a stubborn handoff into an eight-man box.
On the other side, Rob Leonard did not take a series off…
The pressure was not a third-down-only luxury; it was a four-quarter diet. Herbert was hurried into throws he did not want to make, and those throws became the two interceptions. The same pressure helped create the fumbles, even the ones Los Angeles recovered. A defense does not force six fumbles by accident. It does so by arriving in the backfield before the runner can secure the ball and before the quarterback can set his feet.
Leonard’s group also closed. After the Chargers took the lead in the third quarter, Las Vegas did not give up another point. A lead change on the road against a team that was supposed to bounce back is the moment a lot of recent Raiders defenses have folded. This one kept attacking, and that is the identity forming in real time.
The offense is still working through a new system, and the kinks are visible. Third down was sloppy, the run game vanished, and Cousins was sacked twice. None of that erased the fact that Kubiak found answers in the passing game and Leonard never let Herbert off the mat.
That combination is the real story of 2-0, and it also has to travel to New Orleans…
The Saints just beat the Baltimore Ravens, 24-17, on the road. Tyler Shough led two late scoring drives, including a fourth-down sneak with 1:28 left, and New Orleans will host Las Vegas next week, looking to turn that upset into a statement at home. They will be confident, and they should be. A team that just took down Lamar Jackson is not going to flinch because the Raiders are unbeaten.
What Las Vegas can take into the Caesars Superdome is simpler than a prediction. The passing game can win a Sunday when the run game cannot. The defense can take the ball away from a better quarterback than the one it just faced. And if that defense keeps playing at this level while the offense irons out the new system, the ceiling on this team is not Week 2. The ceiling is what happens when the run, the pass and this front seven show up on the same afternoon.
The Saints will try to cash in on their win. The Raiders get to find out if 2-0 is a start or a peak. After Sunday night in Inglewood, it looks like a start.
*Top Photo: Ramble Illustration/Getty Images