Another day, another coaching mistake keeps a weaker team from upsetting a member of the NFL’s elite.

On Thursday, it was Bears coach Matt Eberflus who missed the chance to force overtime against the one-loss Lions. On Friday, Raiders coach Antonio Pierce missed a chance to turn around the twice-defending (and also losing) Chiefs.

The problems for the Raiders began when Pierce called a timeout due to indecision with 2:21 to play. After sending the punt team to fourth-and-11 from the Chiefs’ 40 and trailing by two points, Pierce changed his mind. So he called a timeout and settled for a 58-yard field goal attempt by Daniel Carlson. The kick wasn’t good.

To their credit, the Raiders forced the Chiefs to punt. Las Vegas got the ball back at the eight-yard line with 1:56 left. And they put the ball in the right position for another attempt to win the game.

Things went wrong when quarterback Aidan O’Connell completed a seven-yard pass to running back Ameer Abdullah. It moved the ball to the KC 32.

After a timeout (thanks to the one they wasted), quarterback Aidan O’Connell rushed to the line and spiked the ball with 15 seconds left in the game.

That was the mistake that robbed the Raiders of their chance to win. They could have run the clock down to three or four seconds before the snap and the spike. This approach would have ensured that the Chiefs would not have had the opportunity to get into position for a game-winning field goal attempt.

Then came the mistake that made the first one even worse. Instead of attempting a 50-yard field goal, the Raiders ran another play. The snap came early, O’Connell couldn’t catch it and the Chiefs recovered. Game over.

After the game ended, Pierce explained the reasons for the last botched play.

“We wanted to grab the ball and really just throw it out of bounds and — the ball is at the 32-yard line. We wanted to kill four or five seconds and kick a 49-yard field goal,” Pierce told reporters.

Later in the press conference he was pressed again about this decision.

“Yeah, I answered that a minute ago,” Pierce said. “I tried to just throw the ball away… So we were going to throw the ball away, waste four or five more seconds and kick a field goal.”

The explanation doesn’t make sense. They could have wasted as many seconds as they wanted before O’Connell won the ball on the previous play.

It’s another failure of situational football. In the moments after Abdullah was tackled at the 32 with the clock ticking, O’Connell had to know that the strategy in that moment was to use as much time as possible so Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes didn’t have a chance to do Mahomes’ things to do.

After the ball was spiked, the Raiders decided to shrink Mahomes’ window by burning four or five more seconds. And look what happened.

While it’s different from the fiasco at the end of the Bears-Lions game, there is a common thread. Coaches and players must be prepared for every situation. You need to think clearly and decisively when it comes to watch management.

The final play that became the decisive turnover wasn’t necessary if O’Connell had the presence of mind to line up on the ball, milk the clock and speed it up just enough to attempt the field goal. Frankly, it’s Pierce’s fault that O’Connell wasn’t willing to do what needed to be done in the most important moment of the game.