Can Derek Carr and the Raiders’ passing game keep this up?

The 2019 Raiders receiving corps was better on the field than it looked on paper. For one week, at least.

Derek Carr proved he can push himself back to MVP-adjacent form, carving up the Broncos’ secondary en route to a 22-of-26, 259-yard performance in the face of Denver’s fearsome edge rush. Following Antonio Brown’s release, Tyrell Williams showed he can handle WR1 duties after four years as a supporting piece with the Chargers, hauling in six of his seven targets for 105 yards. Darren Waller looked like the breakout performer Stephen White pegged him to be, catching all but one pass Carr threw his way and notching more receptions in one 2019 game than he did in his entire 2018.

That pushed Oakland out to a 1-0 start with an important win over a division rival. Should the rest of the AFC West be worried? Yes and no.

Carr’s 259 passing yards were only the 19th-most in the NFL in Week 1, but that was enough to build a comfortable lead over a Broncos team that hoped to exploit Oakland’s lack of top-line receiving targets. The Raiders’ offense was mainly a two-man show between Williams and Waller, who made up nearly 58 percent of all Carr’s targets. That should have made the passing game easier to stop, but the team built a strategy that kept Denver from shutting down its top two weapons.

Offensive coordinator Greg Olson laid out a very basic plan to build up his quarterback and the low-wattage receiving corps around him. The Raiders started the game with simple runs and short passes. This accomplished two important advantages; it kept the all-star Broncos’ edge-rush combo of Von Miller and Bradley Chubb away from the ball and it slowly lured Denver’s defensive backs closer to the line of scrimmage. Carr’s ability to connect with quick strikes then allowed him to take greater risks downfield, which paid off in rare spurts.

Sometimes this meant releasing a short-range target like Waller in beatable man coverage:

Other times, it created space in the middle of the field off play-action passes, like it did with a 15-yard first quarter laser to Williams. But mostly it meant relying on playmakers after checkdown passes near the line of scrimmage.

Carr took whatever the Broncos gave him and rode those opportunities to a season-opening win. Most of this damage came with drive-sustaining efficiency; the young veteran completed seven of his eight pass attempts on third down, generating six first downs in the process.

Oakland’s ability to create and exploit gaps fed off the Broncos’ lapses in single coverage. This can work against a team that relies on its pass rush to paper over the deficiencies in its secondary; Denver’s defense ranked only 24th in the league in passing efficiency last season. That strategy will be much more challenging against a team that can handle an intermediate range passing game without giving up its over the top coverage.

The Raiders can change things up as tougher opponents crop up. With the Vikings, Colts, and Bears all on the schedule before Week 6, they’ll need to. Unfortunately for Olson, asking Carr to do more downfield may be a difficult request.

His average throw depth has decreased in each of his last three seasons as a pro, landing at 5.1 yards last fall. That mark ranked 28th among qualified passers, sandwiched between Marcus Mariota and Ryan Tannehill among the dregs of the league’s starting class. It also came with a receiving corps that traded away Amari Cooper after six games and whose top deep threat was a near-retirement Jordy Nelson, so there’s reason to believe he can at least rejoin the top 25 in 2019.

Only four of Carr’s 22 completions traveled more than 10 yards as he used checkdowns and screens to drain Denver. That’s similar to the quarterback we saw in Jon Gruden’s first season in Oakland, where more than 51 percent of Carr’s passing yards came came from runs after the catch. This is a sustainable number if you’re throwing downfield and those percentages come from big gains after 20 yard throws; Patrick Mahomes, for example, saw nearly 2,700 of his 5,097 yards come after the catch. It’s a lot tougher to field a good offense when that balance is the product of a 6-yard dump-off to the tailback.

Carr’s proficiency will depend on Williams and Waller keeping up their Week 1 pace as well. If they can’t, the Raiders may struggle to develop new targets. The second man up in the receivers’ room is Ryan Grant, who has never had more than 45 catches or 64 targets in any of the five years preceding his arrival in Oakland.

So, yes, the Raiders still have a lot to prove about their aerial attack, even after shredding the Broncos in an efficient performance. Carr was able to pick his spots thanks to a deficient Denver defense that allowed Oakland uncommon production with its short-range passing. This created the windows Carr later exploited downfield. While he took advantage of these opportunities with pinpoint throws, it will be much harder to do this against a team that doesn’t have to sacrifice secondary depth to avoid getting screened and slanted to death.

Fortunately for Gruden and Carr, they’ll have plenty of chances to prove they’re legit. Fifteen of them, give or take.