The Raiders’ season is back from the dead

The Oakland Raiders limped into Thursday night’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs with a 2-4 record, riding a four-game losing streak. They were playing generally uninspired football and had already matched their loss total from last year’s 12-4 campaign.

For the most part, they struggled against the Chiefs, who held a 30-24 lead late in the fourth quarter.

But Oakland still had an ace up its sleeve in the form of Derek Carr. With the Raiders’ season on the ropes, Carr drove them down to the goal line in the final seconds. What followed was one of the wildest finishes in recent memory, with multiple penalties and waved-off endings leading to two untimed downs. On the second untimed down, Carr hit Michael Crabtree in the end zone to tie the game at 30-30. The extra point was good, sealing the Raiders’ 31-30 victory.

Carr finished the game with 417 yards and three touchdowns on 29-of-52 passing, putting the team on his back after Marshawn Lynch’s early ejection torpedoed the running game. He once again proved his mettle as a franchise quarterback, pulling off these heroics just a few weeks after suffering broken bones in his back. This — his 12th fourth-quarter comeback since 2015 — was just his second game back from the injury.

It’s hard to overstate how close the Raiders were to losing this and how close their season came to going off the rails. If that second untimed down didn’t succeed, Oakland was staring down the barrel of 2-5 with an 0-3 division record, its chances at the AFC West title all but extinguished.

If the Raiders hoped to make a wild card spot from that point, they’d have to go 8-1 or 7-2 the rest of the way, playing nearly perfect football down the stretch. Those odds would be insurmountable under most circumstances, no matter how well Carr is doing. Pulling this win out of its hat changes the narrative for Oakland, which now owns a tiebreaker win over the Chiefs and raises the stakes for their Week 14 rematch.

Granted, the Raiders aren’t out of the woods yet — far from it, given their 3-4 record. They’re still well behind the 5-2 Chiefs and 3-2 Denver Broncos in the division, and the AFC Wild Card race figures to be crowded this season.

Next week, the Raiders head on the road to face the 3-2 Buffalo Bills, then have another away game with the 3-2 Miami Dolphins. If they can somehow come away with two road wins before their Week 10 bye, they’ll be in much better shape. But that will be easier said than done, especially for a West Coast team traveling east for two straight weeks. And what’s next after the bye week? Home games with the New England Patriots and Broncos. No smooth sailing here.

There are many challenges left ahead for the Raiders. They’ll be in must-win mode from here on out and can’t afford any setbacks. They dug themselves an early hole and are still in the process of crawling out. But with Carr back healthy and Amari Cooper finally living up to his talent level, the Raiders will be hard to totally count out. We’re about to see what this team is really made of.