Raiders vs. Jets Week 8: Kirk Cousins' 4 TDs and Dylan Laube's 95-Yard Return Snap the Skid in a 38-33 Win

Ashton Jeanty spent Wednesday telling reporters that a couple of Jets did not really want to tackle. On Sunday, Jeanty got two carries. The Raiders found plenty of other people New York could not bring down, including a running back who took a kickoff 95 yards and a 38-year-old quarterback who insists he does not ride roller coasters.

The Las Vegas Raiders erased a nine-point halftime deficit and beat the New York Jets 38-33 at MetLife Stadium, as Kirk Cousins threw three touchdown passes, ran for a fourth and watched Jeremy Chinn intercept Geno Smith in the end zone in the final seconds. Las Vegas snaps a four-game losing streak and climbs to 4-4. New York has now lost three straight and falls to 2-6.

Six Possessions, Six Scores, Still Not Enough

The Jets came out swinging. Garrett Wilson caught a 31-yard pass on the first snap, and Braelon Allen started gashing a run defense that came in ranked 30th. Only a goal-line stand, with Eric Stokes and rookie Treydan Stukes making back-to-back stops, held New York to a 21-yard Jason Sanders field goal. Las Vegas answered with a crisp opening drive. Cousins went 4 of 5 for 59 yards and finished it with a one-handed, 12-yard touchdown catch by Brock Bowers on third-and-goal.

Then the scoreboard turned into a pinball machine. Sanders hit from 36 to make it 7-6, and Smith, a Raider a year ago, threw an 18-yard touchdown to Isaiah Williams early in the second quarter. On the ensuing kickoff, Dylan Laube went 95 yards the other way for a touchdown, hitting 20.97 mph per Next Gen Stats. It was the first kickoff return touchdown in the NFL this season, the first of Laube's three-year career and the Raiders' first since Jacoby Ford in 2011.

New York kept coming. Smith dropped an over-the-shoulder fade to Adonai Mitchell on fourth-and-1 from the 12 for a 20-14 lead, and the Raiders' own fourth-and-1 gamble, a Connor Heyward tush push at the New York 46, was stuffed and upheld on review. Sanders then kicked a 39-yarder at the two-minute warning for a 23-14 halftime lead. That field goal ended an ugly trend we flagged in our preview: under Aaron Glenn, the Jets had been outscored 107-6 in the final two minutes of the first half over two seasons, and these were their first points in that window this year.

At the half, New York had scored on all five of its possessions and had outrushed Las Vegas 140-27, with Allen accounting for 121 of those yards.

The Turning Point: A Third Quarter That Finally Belonged to Vegas

Through seven games, the Raiders had been outscored 52-26 in third quarters. Rookie Mike Washington Jr. flipped that script on the opening drive, carrying six times for 30 yards before Cousins found Bowers from 2 yards out to make it 23-21. Allen answered with a 21-yard touchdown run, New York's sixth score in six possessions, for a 30-21 lead. Cousins then punched in a 1-yard sneak with 4:14 left in the third to make it 30-28.

The fourth quarter opened with the play of the day. Jeanty turned a short pass into a 45-yard gain to the Jets' 13, and Cousins hit Jalen Nailor for a 2-yard touchdown, Nailor's first as a Raider, for a 35-30 lead with 11:33 to go. A false start stalled New York's next drive, and the Jets eventually settled for Sanders' fourth field goal, a 31-yarder with 4:31 left that made it 35-33.

That was the problem in a sentence. New York piled up 424 yards and kept handing the ball to its kicker. Las Vegas went 4 for 4 in the red zone. Matt Gay drilled a 53-yarder in the final minute for 38-33, and after a 15-yard catch by Wilson and an unnecessary roughness flag on Chinn moved the Jets to the Raiders' 35, Chinn made up for it by picking off Smith's last throw in the end zone. It was the Raiders' 13th takeaway of the season. The Jets' defense finished with none.

Cousins Keeps His Pulse Flat

Cousins finished 19 of 26 for 247 yards and three touchdowns, a season-best 73.1% completion rate, and added his first rushing touchdown of the year. Per the Raiders, he is the first Las Vegas quarterback with multiple touchdown passes and a rushing score in the same game since Derek Carr in 2020. "I've always tried to not ride the roller coaster," Cousins said. "You've just got to believe that if you keep playing, there's a good chance you'll be there in the fourth quarter."

Bowers was the engine: seven catches, 92 yards and two touchdowns, which pushed him past Mike Ditka for the most receiving yards by a non-receiver through 35 career games, per the team. Washington handled the heavy lifting with 25 carries for 83 yards, the most rushing yards by a Raider since Jeanty's 102 in Week 1. On defense, Maxx Crosby added a 10-yard sack and two quarterback hits. "We came out with an attitude in the second half and I feel like we played a lot better collectively," Crosby said. The second-half numbers back that up: after allowing 140 rushing yards before halftime, Las Vegas allowed 26 after it.

For New York, Allen ran for a career-high 147 yards and a touchdown on 21 carries, and Smith went 20 of 32 for 290 yards, two touchdowns and the game-ending interception against a former team. Mitchell added a 47-yard catch that set up one of the field goals. It was a big day of offense that ended with a familiar result.

The Numbers Behind It

• 424 total yards for the Jets, who scored on their first six possessions and lost anyway.
• 4 Jason Sanders field goals, from 21, 36, 39 and 31 yards.
• 4 of 4 in the red zone for Las Vegas.
• 0 takeaways for the Jets' defense.
• 2 carries for Ashton Jeanty, a career low, against 25 for Mike Washington Jr.
• 5 of New York's six losses decided by one score.

What It Means

Las Vegas can exhale. The Fernando Mendoza chatter gets a week off, the losing streak is over, and Klint Kubiak got the gritty win his team needed. "Our players [were] very resilient, played four quarters of football," Kubiak said. "It wasn't all pretty, but it's not always going to be pretty. It's finding a way to win." The one worry is cornerback Darien Porter, who suffered a groin injury on the Raiders' first defensive play and did not return. The Raiders visit San Francisco on Nov. 8.

For the Jets, it is another one-score heartbreak, one week after a home loss to a previously winless Miami. Glenn is now 4-9 in one-score games as New York's coach. "We can't give up a touchdown on the kickoff," Glenn said after the game, per amNY. "And again, I have to dig deep and figure out how to improve on defense." The Jets visit Kansas City on Nov. 8.

Bulletin Board, Meet Depth Chart

Kubiak said the running back split was his call, not a reaction to Jeanty's comments, and Jeanty took the high road. "We won. It doesn't matter how I feel about how [many] times I get the ball," Jeanty said. Washington, who did most of the running, kept it even simpler: "We're all pros." We picked the Raiders by three. They won by five, and the guy who talked trash did his damage with his hands.

Scoring and stats from the Associated Press game story via ABC News and ESPN, Raiders.com and ESPN's play-by-play. Postgame quotes as reported by Raiders.com, ESPN and amNY, which cited Aaron Glenn's postgame press conference on SNY.