One of my favourite games as a Raider fan came in 1993 against the Jets. It was still early in the year . After a 2-0 start with their new QB Jeff Hostetler the Raiders had lost two straight and went into the game 2-2. The Jets also had a new veteran QB in Boomer Esasion who was off to a hot start in 1993 with the Jets averaging nearly 30 pts per game over the first 4 games.
The game started miserably for Hostetler (who was playing with a bad ankle). He went 4 for 12 and 2 ints including a pick 6 and lost a fumble as the Jets jumped out to a 17-0 lead. Then Art Shell made the bold move of benching Hostetler for veteran Vince Evans, which would lead to one of the great comebacks in Raiders history and the greatest for Evans in his stint as Raiders QB.
Evans got the Raiders back into the game by throwing a 42 yard TD strike to James Jett. He then started out the second half hot throwing a perfect 68 yard TD bomb to Alexander Wright, which cut the Jets lead to 3 points. Another drive in the 3rd quarter set up a game tying Jeff Jaeger FG.
The Raiders defence would smother the Jets this day despite 5 turnovers from the Raiders offence. The Jets offence, which had been on fire the opening 4 games, would only muster 13 pts on their own and only 3 without the help of Raiders turnovers. The Jets would fail to gain 300 yards of offence, and the Raiders defence would sack Esasian 3 times and create 2 turnovers of their own.
Those lone 3 points though would come in the 4th quarter, when a FG put the Jets up 20-17 with 4:29 left in the 4th quarter.
On the ensuing drive Evans hit passes to James Jett and Tim Brown who would finish with 4 catches for 86 yards and a TD and 5 catches for 66 yards. Evans himself would finish 14 for 22 for 247 yards with 2 TDs and an INT and add another 24 yards on 3 carries on the ground.
The Raiders drove the ball down to the 1 yard line and with only seconds left on the clock instead of grounding the ball to set up a game tying FG Evans would hand off to RB Nick Bell who would roll into the Endzone for a 24-20 victory.
This would end up as a huge win for the Raiders as they would finish the season 10-6 and make the playoffs and the Jets finishing the year 8-8. If the Jets would have won this game both teams would have finished 9-7 with the Jets having the tie breaker via a head to head win.
Below is the Full Game and highlights of the Game