Raiders Rally Past Saints: Kirk Cousins, Brock Bowers and a Takeaway Blitz Keep Las Vegas Perfect in Week 3

Three wins. That was the entire 2025 haul for the Las Vegas Raiders. The 2026 team matched it before September was out, climbing out of an 11-point second-half hole to beat the New Orleans Saints 35-27 on Sunday at the Caesars Superdome and stay perfect at 3-0.

Kirk Cousins threw for 248 yards and three touchdowns, Brock Bowers caught 10 passes for 116 yards in his season debut, and a defense that had zero takeaways at halftime started emptying Saints pockets in the fourth quarter: two strip-sacks, an interception and a forced fumble, four giveaways in all. An 11-point comeback engineered by a team from Las Vegas? Call it Ocean's Eleven, Silver and Black edition.

The Dome Got Loud, Then Very Quiet

Bowers announced himself immediately, catching three passes for 37 yards on the opening drive, though the march stalled and Matt Gay settled for a 41-yard field goal. Tyler Shough answered with a 36-yard scramble that fueled a 13-play, 79-yard drive, capped by a 2-yard touchdown to Juwan Johnson. Thomas Booker IV blocked the extra point, which would matter later.

The rest of the half was a tennis rally. Gay tied it from 37, Cousins found Michael Mayer for a 3-yard score, Shough hit Noah Fant from 3 yards out, and Gay's 25-yarder at the horn sent Las Vegas to the locker room up 16-13.

Then the third quarter went sideways. The Raiders went three-and-out, New Orleans marched 87 yards in 12 plays for Johnson's second touchdown, and Dylan Laube coughed up the ensuing kickoff. Two snaps later, Shough found Fant for 16 yards and a 27-16 lead, his fourth touchdown pass of the day.

Rookie Mike Washington Jr. changed the temperature with a 36-yard touchdown run, his first NFL score, shedding tacklers on the way to the end zone. The 2-point try failed, leaving it 27-22 heading toward the fourth.

Bowers Is Back, and Cousins Is Cooking

Bowers missed the first two games after a knee procedure, and the Saints spent the afternoon wishing he had taken a third week. He led everyone with 10 catches on 14 targets, and his 4-yard touchdown grab gave Las Vegas an eight-point cushion. Maxx Crosby summed it up: "He's a complete game-changer. Unguardable."

Cousins was steady for three quarters, then ruthless once the defense started handing him short fields. He finished 22 of 33 with three touchdowns to three different receivers, no interceptions and a 119.3 passer rating, and his nine touchdown passes had him tied for the NFL lead. Klint Kubiak, the 39-year-old first-time head coach who came over after one season as offensive coordinator of the Super Bowl champion Seahawks, said his 38-year-old quarterback "has the experience, he has the maturity and he's making plays."

Shough deserves his flowers, too: 255 yards and a career-high four touchdown passes, with Chris Olave catching nine balls for 107 yards. But the second-year quarterback also turned it over three times, and in a game decided by possessions, that was the whole story.

On defense, Nakobe Dean was everywhere with 12 tackles, 11 of them solo, and rookie cornerback Hezekiah Masses grabbed another interception a week after being named AFC Defensive Player of the Week.

The Arm Was Going Forward, Until It Wasn't

The game flipped on a call Saints fans will still be arguing about at Mardi Gras. With a little over 13 minutes left, Malcolm Koonce came off Shough's blind side just as the quarterback started his throwing motion, and the ball squirted backward. Officials ruled it a fumble, Las Vegas recovered, and a video review upheld the call while the dome filled with boos and Saints coach Kellen Moore threw his palms to the ceiling. It stung extra because a similar Saints strip-sack of Detroit's Jared Goff in Week 1 had been ruled an incompletion on review.

"I just assumed it was a strip-sack," Koonce said. "We just got a little bit of momentum and started balling."

"I thought my arm was going forward," Shough said, before adding, "It doesn't really matter. I've got to get it out sooner, regardless."

Six plays later, Cousins hit Cody White for a 4-yard touchdown and a 28-27 lead. On the next series, Koonce's pressure forced an underthrow that Masses picked off and returned 35 yards to the 4, and Bowers scored on third down from there to make it 35-27 with 6:22 left.

New Orleans got two more cracks. Jeremy Chinn's blitz produced a fourth-down strip-sack that Taron Johnson recovered, and after an apparent interception was wiped out by an illegal contact flag, Dean forced a Juwan Johnson fumble with 1:02 left to end it.

"Momentum swung against us early in the third quarter, but the defense just kept showing up for us, creating turnovers and giving us short fields," Cousins said.

Numbers From the Bayou

• 4: Saints turnovers, all in the fourth quarter. The Raiders committed one all day.
• 4 for 4: New Orleans in the red zone. It did not matter.
• 0: Fourth-quarter points allowed by Las Vegas through three games, tied for the franchise's longest such streak to open a season.
• 9: Raiders takeaways through three games, the team's most through a three-game stretch since 2002.
• 0 for 2: Las Vegas on second-half 2-point tries, a reminder the offense still left points on the field.

Vegas Is Undefeated and Feeling It

The Raiders are 3-0 for the first time since 2021, and they already own as many wins as they collected all of last season. Kubiak's first team has beaten Miami, the Chargers and now New Orleans, and the defense has forced multiple takeaways in all three games. The real test arrives next: two unbeaten AFC West teams meet when Kansas City visits Allegiant Stadium.

New Orleans falls to 1-2, and every game has come down to a single sequence: an overtime loss in Detroit after Moore went for 2 and the win, a goal-line sneak to beat Baltimore, and now this. The Saints also lost Travis Etienne Jr. to an apparent hamstring pull.

"Turnovers in the fourth quarter got us and we weren't able to overcome those," Moore said. "We had our opportunities and we didn't get it done." The Saints host Atlanta on Monday, Oct. 5.

The House Always Wins

Kubiak knew exactly where the credit belonged. "Four takeaways in the second half was the catalyst to the game," he said. In Las Vegas, the house always wins. On Sunday, the house just happened to be on the road, dealing from a Superdome full of people who wanted their chips back.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Postgame quotes as reported by the Associated Press and Raiders.com.