Raiders Are Vegas’s Best Bet Through Three Weeks
Las Vegas built its reputation on neon lights in the middle of the desert, on casinos and high rollers chasing a win at 3 a.m. — the kind of big-win and jackpot moments collected and replayed on Jackpot Sounds. Yet, three games into the 2026 NFL season, the city now has a new attraction drawing attention away from the Strip.
The Las Vegas Raiders are 3-0, and it happened the hard way. Down 27-16 entering the fourth quarter in New Orleans on Sunday, the Raiders forced four turnovers on the Saints’ final five possessions and pulled away for a 35-27 win. Kirk Cousins threw for 248 yards and three touchdowns on 22-of-33 passing, and the defense turned a double-digit deficit into a comfortable finish.
Brock Bowers made his 2026 debut worth the wait. Back from the knee injury that cost him the first two games, Bowers caught 10 passes for 116 yards and a touchdown on a team-high 13 targets, more than triple what any other Raider saw. It was his first game catching passes from Cousins this season, and the two looked like they hadn’t missed a beat.
Ashton Jeanty kept doing what he’s done all year: taking the ball over and over. He carried 19 times for 56 yards and caught three passes for 37 yards against New Orleans. He has at least 19 carries in every game this season, but the yardage hasn’t followed. He managed just 2.9 yards per carry against the Saints, after going for 2.3 yards per carry on 21 carries the week before. The workload is there. The efficiency isn’t yet.
None of that has mattered to the record. The Raiders opened the season by beating Miami 27-13 at home, then went on the road and beat the Chargers 26-14, before Sunday’s comeback in New Orleans. Three games, three wins, none of them decided in garbage time.
It’s worth pausing on how unlikely this looked in August. Las Vegas finished 3-14 in 2025, missed the playoffs for a fourth straight year, and hasn’t won the AFC West in 23 seasons. The team fired its coaching staff, moved on from Geno Smith at quarterback, and hired first-time head coach Klint Kubiak to rebuild the operation. Signing Cousins as a bridge starter was a modest move by the standards of a big offseason. Nobody outside the building was circling Las Vegas as a threat to start 3-0.
The formula so far has been straightforward. Cousins has been steady and mistake-free, Bowers is now healthy and clearly the top target, Jeanty keeps absorbing carries even when they aren’t breaking, and the defense has come up with takeaways when it mattered most, four of them in the fourth quarter alone on Sunday.
The next test is a real one. Kansas City visits in Week 4, and the Chiefs will be the best measuring stick yet for a team that has beaten three opponents who entered Sunday a combined game under .500. Whatever happens against the Chiefs, the Raiders have already put together a start nobody projected for them, and they’ve done it with a rebuilt coaching staff, a new starting quarterback, and a workhorse running back still searching for his best form.
