The Las Vegas Raiders thought they'd won. A touchdown was called, both benches emptied onto the field and fans started to exit. But a replay review showed that Bryan Edwards' outstretched arm was just short of the goal line when his knee touched the ground.
Then things really got wild Monday night.
A stuffed QB sneak begat a false start and then an interception in the end zone. The sequence, which would soon include a Baltimore Ravens fumble, was so chaotic that Derek Carr finding a wide open Zay Jones for the game-winning touchdown almost seemed anticlimactic. The throw wasn't the original plan for that down. Of course it wasn't. Not in this game. The Raiders had lined up for a field goal -- a 43-yarder on second down -- but changed course after drawing a delay of game penalty.
Commitment to craziness.
"I felt like I died and woke up. And died again," Raiders coach Jon Gruden said following his team's 33-27 overtime win. "And I was like a cat -- I had multiple lives tonight. I don't like playing like that. It was tough, but again, we did a lot of really good things to win that football game tonight."
Most of them came in the fourth quarter and overtime. Las Vegas scored on its last three possessions of regulation and advanced inside the Ravens' 1-yard line in the opening minutes of OT. Edwards initially appeared to have ended the Week 1 thriller when he reached over the goal line following a 32-yard pass from Carr, only his knee hit the grass a split-second sooner.
The Raiders, hosting fans at Allegiant Stadium for the first time in the regular season, were mere inches from winning a game they had never led. After an unsuccessful run and penalty pushed them back to the 6-yard line, Carr's pass on second down caromed off Willie Snead's hands and DeShon Elliott's helmet before falling into Anthony Averett's waiting arms for a touchback.
The Las Vegas defense, spearheaded by Carl Nassib's strip-sack of Lamar Jackson, put the ball right back in Carr's hands. Two plays later, he capped off his two-TD, 435-yard performance with the clinching heave to Jones. It was his easiest throw of the night, and quickly erased the potentially haunting INT from a moment earlier.
"I'm like, not like this. You know what I mean? I can't lose like this," Carr said of his dramatic turnover on the ESPN broadcast. "We did too many good things to get us in that position to win it. But the thing that I love the most, everyone that talked crap about our defense for 12 months, they stepped up when we needed it the most and got us the ball back so we could win it again."
It counted as just one win, of course. But it will be remembered more than most.
