As angry and as confused as the Raiders locker room was following last week's phlegmatic blowout loss at Indianapolis, a just-as-enveloping sense of peace and calm filled their Allegiant Stadium quarters Sunday afternoon.
And why not?
Ending a four-game losing streak with a 20-10 victory over the woebegone Titans may or may not have been the get-right win the Raiders deserved, but it was what was required. And for now, they'll take it.
"Man, it was much needed, man," linebacker Jamal Adams told me. "You drop a couple of games and [the] outside starts to turn on you. Inside, we start to question a lot of things. But at the end of the day, it's the NFL - any given Sunday, anybody can be beat. No matter the competition, no matter what the record is on the other side, we've got to show up.
"So this was a huge win for [a] confidence boost. Obviously, we've got a tough one next week, dealing with Kansas City, but getting back on track, that's the most positive thing we can do."
Especially with the disheartening ways the Raiders have found to drop games since winning the season opener at New England - failing to hold serve at home against the Chargers and Bears, not showing up in Washington and Indianapolis.
So it doesn't matter if it was real, or fool's gold, really. A win in the NFL, where every game is a season unto itself, is a win, is a win, is, yes, a win.
Or, as Al Davis was prone to say (kinda), it didn't matter how his players looked in crossing that finish line, so long as they were the first ones to cross that tape.
Yeah, Just win…if even barely.
"This is a good little jump start to where we want our season to go," said tight end Michael Mayer, who had five catches for 50 yards, including a 4-yard touchdown reception, in his return after missing two-plus games due to a concussion.
"But we've still got a lot of work to do. There's no doubt about it. There's a lot more games left so we're going to keep our heads down, we're going to keep practicing, we're going to keep preparing like we always prepare and try to get better every single day."
Admirable, truly. And six games into a season for a team that is still trying to establish an identity, it's all you can really ask for at this stage, yes?
"We've got to stay even keel," Adams added. "We did win … but we can't get too high, we can't get too low."
Yet as Adams acknowledged, it's easier to preach that message than it is to practice it.