Raiders put a shock into Chargers 26-14, start 2-0

LOS ANGELES — The Raiders beat the Chargers 26-14, started 2-0 for the first time since 2021, and won in Los Angeles for the first time since that empty-stadium 2020 game that hardly felt like a road trip at all.

They did it without Brock Bowers. They did it while Ashton Jeanty was bottled up for 48 yards on 21 carries. They did it after an early interception, a goal-line stall, and the usual collection of sloppy moments that used to turn into losses.

Then they closed. That last part is the part that feels new.

Kirk Cousins was 19-of-29 for 253 yards and three touchdowns.

The 38-year-old joined Ken Stabler from 1976 as the only Raiders quarterbacks to throw three or more scores in each of his first two games with the club.

Klint Kubiak, in his second game as a head coach, became the first full-time Raiders coach since Bill Callahan in 2002 to win his first two.

Those are the kinds of footnotes that used to belong to someone else.

The game itself was a grind until it wasn’t. Neither team scored in the first quarter.

Cameron Dicker’s 58-yard try clanged off the crossbar. Cousins then threw an interception when Tre Tucker slipped on an in-breaking route.

Rookie Hezekiah Masses, starting because Darien Porter was out, answered with the first of his two interceptions.

The Raiders still punched it in from the 1 four straight times and came away empty. Old Raiders teams would have spent the rest of the afternoon talking about that sequence.

Instead, Cousins hit Tucker on back-to-back throws totaling 55 yards, the second a 40-yard touchdown when Chargers rookie Genesis Smith lost him.

Los Angeles answered with Omarion Hampton’s 1-yard plunge.

Then Cousins found Tucker again, this time for 42 yards, and Matt Gay drilled a career-long 59-yarder as the half expired. 10-7 Raiders.

The kind of field-position and special-teams competence that used to feel like a rumor.

Justin Herbert and Oronde Gadsden put the Chargers ahead 14-10 early in the third.

The Raiders answered with the kind of drive that used to die in their own territory. They converted a fourth-and-1 with a Connor Heyward sneak.

They ran a double-pass gadget: Cousins to Jeanty back to Cousins to Dareke Young for 27 yards.

Then Cousins found Cody White, the practice-squad elevation who used to play at Michigan State, for a 13-yard touchdown.

“It just meant the world,” said White, whose family was on hand. “Just being able to go out there and make the plays when Kirk was able to give me some opportunities. It just felt amazing to go out there and get a win.”

“Cody showed me a lot today,” Cousins said. “I guess those were my bank reps, just watching him play for Michigan State and then when he arrived try to translate that to here and now.”

The veteran and the journeyman looked like they had been doing this together for years.

The game still hung there at 17-14 until Nakobe Dean punched the ball out of Hampton’s hands with 3:52 left.

Jeremy Chinn scooped it and returned it 43 yards to the Chargers 16.

Three plays later Cousins hit White again, 11 yards, 24-14.

Maxx Crosby then chased Herbert into the end zone and Joe Alt held him. Safety. 26-14.

The Chargers never scored again. Masses picked Herbert a second time for good measure.

A Raiders rookie corner with two interceptions in a game had not happened since Henry Williams in 1979.

“He’s been phenomenal with the operations and leadership,” Kubiak said. “I can’t say enough great things about No. 8.”

Tucker, who finished with five catches for 119 yards after the early drop, said Cousins “can probably play until he is 60.”

“He’s elite, man. I’m so excited to play with him,” Tucker said. “He does not look any bit old to me, and the things I see him doing in practice, he’s doing in the games.”

“I was saying to Fernando as the clock was running out, ‘Hey man, this is every game in the NFL,’” Cousins said, standing on the sideline with the first-round pick. “It takes everything you got, and so you never know what direction it’s going to go, but we got to find those inches. We got to finish.”

Then he added the line that sounded like a mission statement more than a sound bite.

“It’s still early, but the goal is to build something that way outlasts me,” Cousins said.

For a franchise that has spent too many years watching promising starts dissolve into familiar late-game sloppiness, Sunday looked different.

Not perfect. Jeanty will need better vision and the receivers still have to stay on their feet. The run game was a slog.

But the Raiders took the ball away three times, they kicked the long one, they converted when they had to, and they put their foot on the Chargers’ throat instead of waiting for something to go wrong.

Kubiak’s team is 2-0. Cousins has six touchdown passes in two games. The crowd at SoFi sounded more like a Raiders home game than a Chargers one.

They visit New Orleans next. Two games do not make a season.

Anyone who has covered this team through the lean years knows that.

But the vibe around this group, the veteran quarterback still slinging it, the first-year coach who will not let them play small, the defense that is making plays instead of just making noise, feels like something other than the past twenty seasons of Raiders football.

For now, that is enough.