The Raiders Are 3-0, and the Weather Feels Different

Some starts feel like weather—unpredictable, passing, soon forgotten. Others feel like climate—a shift in conditions that reshapes what comes next. The Las Vegas Raiders, a franchise that spent last season wandering through the wilderness of a 3-14 record, have opened this season with three straight victories, and the question hovering over the league is whether this is merely a warm spell or something more permanent.

The numbers suggest it might stick. Since the playoff field expanded to seven teams per conference in 2020, 23 of 28 clubs that opened 3-0 reached the postseason. From 1990 to 2019, when six teams per conference qualified, 109 of 148 advanced . The Raiders themselves began 3-0 in 2021, the most recent time they made the playoffs, a quiet precedent that lends this start a certain weight .

What makes this run particularly striking is the context. The Raiders won only three games all of last season. ESPN analytics gave them a mere 6.7 percent chance of opening 3-0, and they have been favored only once—against a Miami team widely considered the weakest in football . They then beat a Chargers squad expected to contend, and on Sunday they went into New Orleans and erased an 11-point second-half deficit to win 35-27 .

First-year head coach Klint Kubiak has been measured in his response. "Our job as coaches is to get them dialed in," he said. "The thing about our team is we have a mature team that's very goal-oriented and has some strong leadership, and they're not satisfied with what's been done for three games" . That discipline may serve them as well as any scheme.

The quarterback play has been steady rather than spectacular, which in its own way is a form of excellence. Kirk Cousins, at 38, has become the first quarterback since Russell Wilson in 2020 to open a season with three wins and three touchdown passes in each of those games . He is not playing like a caretaker for rookie Fernando Mendoza; he is playing like a man determined to hold the job as long as his arm allows.

There are flaws beneath the surface. The running game has been nearly nonexistent for two consecutive weeks, and special teams errors—a fumbled kickoff return, a kickoff out of bounds—nearly cost them against the Saints . Tight end Brock Bowers returned from knee surgery with 10 catches for 116 yards, a reminder of what the offense can look like when fully assembled . The margin between 3-0 and 1-2 has been thin, and thin margins have a way of evening out.

What has held, so far, is the defense. The Raiders have allowed zero points in the fourth quarter this season, becoming the first team since Indianapolis and Minnesota in 2022 to accomplish that over the first three games . That statistic reflects more than luck. It reflects a unit that tightens when the game narrows, a quality that tends to travel well across a long season.

The next test is immediate: the unbeaten Kansas City Chiefs visit on Sunday, and the timing could hardly be sharper for an AFC West rivalry . Whether the Raiders are a genuine contender or merely an early-season curiosity will begin to be answered then. For now, they have done what few thought possible, and in doing so, they have earned the right to be taken seriously—not as a finished product, but as a team that has learned how to win the games it once lost.

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Sources: AP News, Yahoo Sports, New Haven Register, NFL.com