SANTA CLARA, Calif. — By the time Kirk Cousins recovered the ball Sunday, the Raiders had already gotten about the best outcome they could reasonably expect from a fumbled shot-gun snap exchange.
They still had the football. All Cousins had to do was make sure they kept it.
Instead, he tried to make something of a play that had gone bad and wound up throwing an interception that the 49ers Jaden Dugger took 35 yards for a touchdown and a 28-10 lead.
The Raiders never truly recovered in a 38-17 loss.
That the play opened the third quarter of a game the Raiders had worked their way back into made it all the more costly.
Raiders Klint Kubiak would have gladly lived with the original mistake. What bothered the Raiders coach was that his veteran quarterback had a chance to limit the damage and chose to throw. As Kubiak saw it, that was the time to “eat it and go on to the next one.”
Cousins had a slightly different idea about how to accomplish the same thing.
“The ball needs to be thrown into the first row of the stands,” he said.
Either would have worked. Take the loss, get back in the huddle and give Kubiak a chance to call something that might get the yards back. Or give somebody in the seats a shot at a souvenir. You can coach your way around a bad down. It gets considerably harder when the other team gets six points out of it.
This is where the Raiders ought to be able to count on Cousins. One of the benefits of having a veteran quarterback is the judgment that comes from having seen just about everything a defense can throw at him. Sometimes the most valuable thing all that experience buys you is the willingness to go down with the ball, as unsatisfying as that might feel in the moment.
Especially on a day when points were proving so hard for the Raiders to come by. In the fourth quarter, Cousins found Michael Mayer for what appeared to be a touchdown, only for Mayer’s offensive pass interference penalty to wipe it out. Three plays later, Cousins threw an interception in the same end zone.
The earlier interception had to be particularly aggravating for Kubiak. The moment Cousins got his hands back on the football, he’d done the hard part. The 49ers could have walked away from that play with a stop. The Raiders let them walk away with a touchdown.
