The Oakland Raiders and the Miami Dolphins battled on a nail-biting game that came to the wire in Miami. The Raiders invaded the Dolphins’ home field and crushed their fans’ dreams in a 27-24 victory in favor of Oakland.

Raiders’ quarterback Derek Carr was matched up with Dolphins’ Jay Cutler. Jay Cutler has had an off season this year taking a few games off but managed to change that in this game. Jay Cutler ran the offense of Miami efficiently and threw for 3 touchdowns with no interceptions. Derek Carr on the other hand struggled with receivers. Carr was only able to throw in 1 touchdown and suffered 1 interception.

The Raiders were first to get points on the board with 3 point off a field goal. Miami came back with a touchdown to take the lead 6-3. They then missed the 33 yard extra point and had to punt the ball back to Oakland. Oakland’s special teams was ready for the punt until the Dolphins hit them with the on-side kick and recovered the football for another chance to score.

With only about 3 and a half minutes left in the second quarter,  Derek Carr threw a bomb out for a 44-yard touchdown to Johnny Holton to take the lead back to 10-6. This was all set up with a scoring drive of only 6 plays in 4 minutes and 2 seconds, for a total of 81 yards. Miami did their best to close out the half with a good 49-yard field goal attempt, succeeded,  and matched the Raiders 10-9. However, Miami did this with 30 seconds remaining on the clock, plenty of time for Oakland to get back into field goal range. With 2 seconds left in the half, Oakland’s kicker, Giorgio Tavecchio, kicked a good 53-yard field goal to maintain a 13-9 lead.

Oakland received the ball at the start of the third quarter and managed to advance to the Dolphins 18-yard line, where Derek Carr passed it off to Marshawn “Beastmode” Lynch for the touchdown. This put up Oakland 20-7. Miami then went on a 7 play scoring drive of 75 yards when Jay Cutler passed the ball to Jarvis Landry to get the score to 20-16.

In the fourth quarter with only about 5 minutes left, Derek Carr gave the ball back to Lynch for a 3 yard touchdown, his second of the night. This gave the Raiders the advantage of 27-16. With about 2 minutes left Derek Carr went for the pass to score again, but threw an interception to Reshad Jones. This  ended up with Jay Cutler throwing a 15-yard touchdown pass to Julius Thomas, to set the score at 27-22. Miami then went for the 2-point conversion and scored. However, they missed the on-side kick to get another chance to save the game for the home fans. Oakland remained with a 27-24 lead and a slim victory.