Raiders’ goal of winning Super Bowl before Oakland departure fading quickly in 2017

Super Bowl hopes for the Oakland Raiders this season? Or how about the playoffs?

Those thoughts appear to be slipping away quickly at the midway point of the season as the Raiders fell to the Buffalo Bills 34-14 on Sunday.

The Raiders (3-5) have dropped five of their past six games after starting the season 2-0. Suddenly, Oakland is trying to fight to stay alive for the playoffs.

When the Raiders in March announced their move to Las Vegas for the 2020 season, many players said they were focused on bringing a Super Bowl title to Oakland. It is not looking good for the 2017 season.

Next up for the Raiders: a Sunday night game against the Miami Dolphins on Nov. 5.

The Raiders will be in Florida this week, instead of traveling back to the West Coast.

“I’m going to keep working and I will get better,” said quarterback Derek Carr, who completed 31 of 49 passes for 313 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions. “That’s what our team needs to do. They need to continue to be a better version of themselves every week. Hopefully this is a slap on the face to a lot of the guys in the locker room.”

Raiders running back DeAndre Washington made a costly turnover when he had a 5-yard reception and the ball was popped loose and recovered by the Bills’ Matt Milano for a 40-yard touchdown for a 14-7 Buffalo lead. The Bills never looked back.

“We got to dust ourselves off and have a great second half of the season,” Washington said. “We know what we need to do, and we need to execute. We didn’t expect to be 3-5 at this point. It is what it is and we need to dust ourselves off. We got the second half of the season to turn this season around.”

The last time the Raiders went to the Super Bowl, in 2002, they went 4-0 then dropped four straight before winning five in a row

Raiders coach Jack Del Rio said “we need to get hot in this second half” to turn around the season.

Said Oakland tight end Lee Smith added: “Just need to be men and look ourselves in the mirror and do your job.”

Carr wasn’t hiding his feelings how he’s going to approach this week’s practice to help save the season.

“We’re going to get after it in practice,” he said. “I probably won’t shut up all week about how hard we need to go in practice. We’re at that point, and obviously the way that we’ve been doing it hasn’t been good enough.”

This story was originally published October 29, 2017 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Raiders’ goal of winning Super Bowl before Oakland departure fading quickly in 2017."