LAS VEGAS -- It started with a Kyle Dugger pick-six. He jumped a short pass from Derek Carr to Davante Adams and waltzed into the end zone untouched.
Then the Patriots forced five consecutive Raiders punts. They allowed just 32 yards in 21 plays (1.5 yards per play) on those series. They were dominant, and they'd put their team in position to take a 24-17 lead.
With 1:54 remaining in the game, though, something happened. The Patriots -- after helping force three consecutive incompletions -- softened up.
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On a fourth-and-10 play, Carr hit Mack Hollins along the boundary for 12 yards. He then hit Hollins again for 13 more. Passes to Josh Jacobs and Darren Waller covered 26 yards. Then Carr reared back for a 30-yard touchdown pass to Keelan Cole that put the Raiders a point-after attempt away from a tie.
"Gotta finish," Jabrill Peppers said. "We just gotta finish. Nothing else matters. We didn't stop them when we needed to stop them. That was as close a call as you could get on the touchdown. They called it a touchdown. You need indisputable evidence. It definitely sucks. It definitely sucks ... You can't just pinpoint it on any particular play."
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The NFL's senior vice president of officiating Walt Anderson told pool reporter Mike Reiss of ESPN that there wasn't enough evidence to overturn the Cole score. Had the play been ruled incomplete in real time, Anderson explained, there wouldn't have been enough evidence to overturn it and call it a touchdown, either.
The Patriots' odds of making the postseason fell to 19 percent with the loss, according to FiveThirtyEight.
"It's not over, over yet," Peppers said. "It's not like it knocks us out of contention. It sucks to lose like this. Not going to lie to you. But at the end of the day, everything we want is still kind of in front of us. We're just making it real, real hard on ourselves right now. We're all veteran guys. Even the rookies carry themselves professionally.
"Probably going to sulk a little bit tonight on the long flight. Maybe tomorrow. But at the end of the day we know we got a big opportunity against a good Cincinnati team rolling in. That's where our focus has to be."