"Today is tell the truth (day)," Kiffin said. "We tell it how it is, bad
or good, on all sides of the ball with the players specifically."
The truth is that the Raiders, who were actually percentage points in
first place in the AFC West at 2-2 after the bye week, have now fallen into
fourth place after taking their divisional medicine from San Diego and
Kansas City.
They've lost 17 consecutive games within the division, which made the
Chiefs' result seem all but inevitable.
That is one "truth" Kiffin has no intention of recognizing, not when he
is attempting to get his team to take control of games in the fourth
quarter.
It is a skill that is difficult to identify because it can happen in so
many ways, but the fact is, if the Raiders had it, they'd be the talk of the
NFL instead of serving in a recurring role as an also-ran.
In five of the Raiders' six games, they have held the lead in the fourth
quarter. Only once, a 35-17 win over Miami, did they come out on top.
"That's not something where, `oh, we have 50 things to fix, and here we
go again, it's the same old Raiders or whatever team you happen to be,' "
Kiffin said. "I don't believe that is it.
"As poor as our offense was (Sunday), to be 15 yards from a game-winning
field goal at the end, it shows that if you play that way, you can still be
in games," Kiffin said.
The Raiders got improved play on defense and special teams but came up
woefully short on offense because of an inability to run the ball.
It was in that area that Oakland's vision of an AFC West win did not
materialize.
"Like we talked about Saturday and Sunday, the storyline was going to be
the Raiders defense shutting down Kansas City and we did it the majority of
the game until that one drive, and then the offense didn't do its part,"
Kiffin said.
Running back LaMont Jordan found himself in the position of having to
answer questions similar to the ones he heard since joining the Raiders as a
free agent in 2004.
Jordan is 0-5 against the Chiefs, 0-15 against the AFC West and 8-29
overall.
"It's another one of those tough pills to swallow," Jordan said. "It's
just another game that you look at you say to yourself, `Hey, we should have
won, we could have won, and we didn't,' " Jordan said. "It's been that way
since I've been a Raider. It's one of those things that I'm really sick of.
It's not something you can really talk about and change. It's something you
have to go out there and make it happen. We're close. We just haven't gotten
it done."