On a day when horrible weather was the rule in the NFL, the blue skies of Jacksonville were not favorable conditions for the Oakland Raiders.
Oakland blew a second half lead and lost a 38-31 shootout against Jacksonville's resilient Jags. Worse still, the other serious bubble team AFC wild card contenders Colts, Chargers, and Dolphins all won.
Jason Campbell threw for 324 yards and two touchdowns, but was knocked out for a series once Jacksonville took the momentum in the fourth.
Darren McFadden ran relatively wild for 123 yards of his own on the ground. He notched a 67-yard touchdown catch, a 51-yard touchdown run that put the Raiders up 24-14 early in the third quarter, and a 36-yard touchdown run that tied the game 31-31 right before the two-minute warning.
But it was an absolute Raiders defensive collapse in the second half.
Jacksonville scored four touchdowns and 31 points in the final 30 minutes, and both Jacksonville backs Maurice Jones-Drew and Rashad Jennings went for more than 100 yards.
It cancelled out all the love engendered by safety Mike Mitchell's insta-recovery of a fumbled Tyvon Branch interception that seemed, at the time, like one of the Raiders' defensive highlights of the season.
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Joe Kukura is a freelance writer who's consoling people by saying at least they didn't lose because they mishandled the extra point snap on what should have been the tying touchdown.
