Graney: Raiders will gladly take .500 record after 4 games

You get the idea.

The first four games are in the books for the Raiders, and they’ll gladly take a 2-2 record. It didn’t come in the most conventional manner — win at Baltimore and lose at home to Carolina? — but it’s what they are.

And all because of a gutsy 20-16 win over the Browns on Sunday at Allegiant Stadium.

This whole thing could have gone south in a hurry. The Raiders were coming off an embarrassing loss to the lowly Panthers and watched as the Browns started the game with a 70-yard scoring drive that spanned more than nine minutes.

I don’t know if a season was in the balance, but really bad to awful was at the doorstep.

Showed some fight

The Raiders instead responded. Didn’t roll over. Showed more than just a little fight. It wasn’t pretty at times. It rarely is with this bunch. But it was effective. It was enough.

How much this win means in the bigger picture of a season is unknown, but a loss just might have thrown this team into a spiral.

As it is, they’re tied with the Chargers and Broncos, all looking up at the unbeaten Chiefs in the AFC West.

How important is a victory in Week 4?

Given what we saw most recently from these Raiders, incredibly so.

“It shows our character and trust in one another,” safety Isaiah Pola-Mao said. “This whole week we talked about, ‘What are you willing to do for your brother?’ I think it showed with how we played today.”

They did so without several key pieces, most notably injured wide receiver Davante Adams and defensive end Maxx Crosby. In other words, the team’s two best players.

But while a next man up mentality has become a sports cliche, the Raiders were energized by some not so accustomed to media scrums at their lockers after games.

And you need this to be any good, to give yourself a chance at winning. You need Pola-Mao playing so well in his first start. You need a defensive end like Charles Snowden making two of the game’s biggest plays when Cleveland was driving in the final minutes for a go-ahead score.

You need a run game that was dead and buried those first three weeks to show life. You need an offensive line not to get pushed around for once. You need timely plays like the interception Tre’von Moehrig had in the third quarter and the Browns driving. You need AJ Cole to again prove himself one of the world’s best punters.

You need a holding call to erase an 82-yard scoring pass by the other guys.

You need, in Adams’ absence, receivers like Tre Tucker and DJ Turner to each score on rushing touchdowns.

“We knew we could bounce back from last week,” Turner said. “Just stick to the game plan and have nobody panic. Just do what you do and be yourself. That’s what the coaches mentioned all week.

“It’s big. We’re a quarter done and playing .500 ball. We just have to go into the second quarter of the season and make the most out of a win like this. We need to come out on the positive side of these next four games.”

At Denver. Home to Pittsburgh. At Rams. Home to Chiefs.

Don’t want 1-3

Getting healthy will help. So will the run game if it continues to be productive. Gardner Minshew (14 of 24 passing for 130 yards) certainly wasn’t at his best Sunday, but the quarterback has done more good than bad when talking a .500 record.

And they’ll gladly take it.

No matter how they got here.

“First quarter of the season, you don’t want to finish 1-3,” defensive end Tyree Wilson said. “We had to at least come out 2-2. Now we’re to the next quarter and hope we’re going to dominate. So we have to go to work this week and get ready for the Broncos.”

It hasn’t been the most conventional journey.

Rarely is with the Raiders.

Ed Graney, a Sigma Delta Chi Award winner for sports column writing, can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com. He can be heard on “The Press Box,” ESPN Radio 100.9 FM and 1100 AM, from 7 to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday. Follow @edgraney on X.