October 6, 2026 - 6:00 am

The Raiders may have actually gained more national respect from their first loss of the season than they did from starting the year with three consecutive wins.

After beating three teams with one combined victory, the Raiders stood toe-to-toe with the undefeated Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday and had a late lead before falling just short in front of a national audience with the top CBS commentating crew calling the action.

The narrow defeat apparently did more to announce their arrival on the national stage than any of their victories.

“The Raiders are legit,” NFL analyst Manti Te’o, the former linebacker, said on NFL Network. “I am so bought in on this team.”

ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky was similarly impressed.

“They pushed Kansas City to the brink,” he said on “NFL Live.” “We knew the Chiefs were a good to very good football team going into yesterday. I come out of the game saying the Raiders are a legit playoff team.”

While the Raiders were the buzz of all the Monday shows, they weren’t ready to hear about it immediately after the game.

“There are no moral victories,” veteran safety Jeremy Chinn said. “I’m pissed off. I felt we should have won the game.”

Chinn’s feelings mirrored those of Maxx Crosby, who said no opinions whether positive or negative will change the team’s solitary focus on finding a way to simply get better each day.

Crosby said instead of feeling proud of hanging close, he was lamenting the plays the Raiders left on the field. While the Chiefs were good, he believes the Raiders had every chance to win on Sunday.

“It doesn’t matter what the outside world thinks or all the other (expletive) about people predicting what we’re going to be or if we’re real contenders and things like that,” Crosby said at his locker after the game. “We’re truly focused on our everyday process of getting better. That starts with the coaches and trickles down to the whole team and our leadership. And we’ve got work to do.

“Opinions don’t matter. We’ve just got to get better and that starts now.”

As Crosby points out, the season isn’t even 25 percent completed. The Raiders are far from a finished product.

A rebuilding project that appears far ahead of schedule. But the measuring stick for the current roster is not the same as an organizational plan for long-term viability.

The current players aren’t seeking validation or affirmation. They just want to win as many games as possible.

That’s why running back Ashton Jeanty, who expressed disappointment last year as a rookie about the team’s record and lack of competitiveness, said Sunday’s loss didn’t feel any more rewarding than the ugly losses the Raiders were racking up in 2025.

“A loss is a loss,” he said. “We come out here to win each and every single week. We’ve just got to look at what we need to do better and do that next week.”

One new variable that will be added to the equation is how the team will react to losing for the first time.

“We’ll learn a lot about ourselves with this adversity this week,” Chinn said. “But I have all the faith that we’ll go out there and continue to push ourselves.”

Kubiak has confidence his team will handle the situation just fine. He has preached from the beginning a mindset of not getting too high after wins and now gets to instill a similar attitude of not overreacting negatively to a loss.

“You find out way more about yourself through adversity,” Kubiak said. “So we have some adversity right here, and now we get a chance to go to the next opponent.”

The players have received his message.

“The mindset doesn’t change, win or lose,” Crosby said. “You can’t ride the rollercoaster. Enjoy the moment when we win, feel the pain when we lose.

“But also, go right back to work either way.”

Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.