Matt Stafford against the Raiders

The Oakland Raiders are 4-5 and 2-2 on the road this season, but have dropped its past two in a row and it will be without OLB Aldon Smith who violated the league’s substance abuse policies. A year after finishing with the NFL’s least-efficient offense, the Raiders rank eighth overall and ninth in scoring heading into Sunday’s game against the Lions.

“I can’t speak specifically to it”, Del Rio said. Last week, in relief of the injured and very bad Peyton Manning, he threw 24 in the second half. “He dropped a couple”, Del Rio said. “I think you look at the matchups”.

Johnson’s career might be slowing down. “He runs the ball out of the backfield well, can catch it. He’s a great competitor”.

So the margin remained the same, at 18-13, but so did the result: The Lions on top. Detroit’s leading rusher, Ameer Abdullah has just 240 yards on 68 attempts this season. Stafford’s rushing touchdown was a well called play by Lions offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter. He also feels more comfortable as a leader on this team now that he is no longer a rookie.

The coaches were fired before the Lions’ trip to London to face the Kansas City Chiefs on November 1, with the executives canned following that 45-10 loss. The Raiders never got the ball back. During the first half of the season, the Raiders proved to the rest of the league they were a team on the rise and ready to compete with the NFL’s elite. But you can see for the numbers you already saw that’s not the case for Cooper.

It is not likely the Lions are going to be able to get one player around the caliber of Stafford with that type of money, seeing as there are only going to be a few available this year.

But they aren’t yet good – they make just the wrong mistakes at just the wrong time against the teams that can take advantage of every single one, such as Cordarrelle Patterson’s 93-yard return off a Sebastian Janikowski squib kick.

Nov 22, 2015; Houston, TX, United States of America; NY Jets quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick (14) in the pocket against the Houston Texans during the second half of a game at NRG Stadium. In the first three quarters, it held the Lions to just nine points.

“He played big all game today. Detroit went up on Matthew Stafford’s 5-yard run on a quarterback draw, then added a safety for the final margin of victory on tackle Donald Penn’s holding infraction in the end zone.

“We all did a lot of soul-searching during the bye week”, said defensive end Jason Jones. “Being tough, being able to start fast, being able to play with really good football teams”.

“We’re going to go to Chapter 10 (of the season) tomorrow”. After the defense finally held to force a Lions punt, the offense went on their best drive of the day.

The Lions played especially well on defense, were good on special teams and did enough offensively that it mattered.

The fast starts have been key. And when the opportunity arose on Sunday against the Raiders, with the Lions nursing an 18-13 lead inside the two-minute warning, Bell stopped short of the end zone on goal. They also struck first with the opening touchdown at Pittsburgh but couldn’t hang onto the lead in that back-and-forth game.

Considering the entire team looks to be struggling, there is a bigger problem with the Raiders than just a couple of subpar performances from their star players.