The Broncos have been notoriously slow starters on offense this season — and this game has been no exception — but lucky for them, the Raiders haven’t been any better. The AFC West rivals enter halftime tied 7-7.<\/p>\n
Las Vegas opened the scoring on its second offensive drive. After a poor punt from rookie punter Jeremy Crawshaw, Geno Smith completed a couple of passes for first downs, and Ashton Jeanty capped the drive with a 4-yard touchdown run.<\/p>\n
Denver had zero first downs on its first four drives — the first time that’s happened this season and the first time the Raiders defense has accomplished that feat since 2016 — before a J.K. Dobbins run moved the chains to start Denver’s fifth drive. Two plays later, Bo Nix found rookie Pat Bryant for a big gain, and two plays after that, Nix found former college teammate Troy Franklin for a touchdown.<\/p>\n
The Raiders have wasted several good opportunities. On the opening drive, Smith took a sack to push them out of field goal range. On their fourth drive, the Raiders got down to the Denver 31-yard line, but an offensive pass interference led to another punt. On Las Vegas’ fifth drive, Smith took a sack on fourth-and-5, setting up a short field that Denver eventually turned into a touchdown. Overall, Smith has been sacked five times.<\/p>\n
Nix made a head-scratching deep throw late in the half that Kyu Blu Kelly intercepted, but again, Las Vegas couldn’t take advantage, as Dont’e Thornton dropped a deep Smith pass.<\/p>\n
Raiders punter AJ Cole has arguably been the best player in this game, with two of his punts going out of bounds at the Denver 1-yard line. That tells you the state of the Las Vegas offense.<\/p>\n
It’s been ugly so far, but Denver has been known for its second-half rallies. Can it pull off another one? Keep up with our coverage below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Broncos have been notoriously slow starters on offense this season — and this game has been no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[2215,122952,122950,122953,122949,122951,49,48,1743,1768,1736,514,82,44228,105725],"class_list":["post-266960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-bo-nix","tag-broncos-vs-raiders-odds","tag-broncos-vs-raiders-score","tag-broncos-vs-raiders-streaming","tag-broncos-vs-raiders-time","tag-broncos-vs-raiders-tnf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-denver-broncos","tag-geno-smith","tag-las-vegas-raiders","tag-nfl","tag-sports","tag-thursday-night-football","tag-tnf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}