It's clear the Dolphins' defensive game plan was to stop the Raiders from running the ball and force Kirk Cousins to beat them through the air. How much was this the emphasis? As it turns out, the most in the NFL in Week one.
Week 1: Box Defenders Faced vs. Success Rate
— SFdata9ers🏈📊 (@sfdata9ers) September 17, 2026
LV faced the heaviest boxes in Week 1, averaging 7.12 defenders in the box. More than one-third of their plays came against 8+ box defenders.
Data: @FTNFantasy pic.twitter.com/aSqeLrTkhR
The Raiders lined up against eight men in the box a league highest 34.4% of the time. And at least seven men in the box 76.6 of the time.
That didn't seem to stop the Raiders from implementing their game plan of running the ball, often right up the gut. The Raiders had 31 designed runs in the game by
the backs and put up 144 yards on the ground in those runs, averaging over 4.6 yards per carry with nine first downs.
As to making Kirk Cousins beat them through the air, he sort of did that, and sort of didn't. Sure, the Raiders three touchdowns were all through the air. But they were all short passes, two of which went to RB Ashton Jeanty.
Seeing the Dolphins sell out to stop the run, should be an invitation to test them deep. As it stood, Cousins had just one completion go even 20 yards through the air -- a 21-yard completion to Tre Tucker. The next longest was the 15-yard TD pass to Jack Bech.
Cousins had a few other deep attempts in the game. The results were a pass breakup for Tre Tucker, an interception for Jack Bech, an incompletion that fell short of Malik Benson, overthrowing Jalen Nailor, and another interception for Nailor. That's 1-for-6 with two interceptions on deep passes. And with a very clean pocket too.
Most likely running into stacked boxes and failing to complete any deep passes won't get it done against the Chargers. That is unless the run game somehow continues to work even if they sell out to stop it. In which case, just keep riding that horse into the ground.
This article originally appeared on Raiders Wire: Dolphins led the NFL is stacked boxes and Raiders ran through it anyway
