LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Raiders' fate Sunday might have been sealed earlier in the week when management took three key players out of the lineup and placed them on injured reserve.
A major win came out of their 34-10 loss to the New York Giants — a clear shot at the top pick in next year's NFL draft.
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New York Giants linebacker Bobby Okereke (58) celebrates his interception with cornerback Deonte Banks (2) and linebacker Darius Muasau (53) during the first half of an NFL football game against the Las Vegas Raiders Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Las Vegas Raiders defensive tackle Thomas Booker IV (99) tackles New York Giants wide receiver Wan'Dale Robinson (17) during the first half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)
New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart celebrates his touchdown during the first half of an NFL football game against the Las Vegas Raiders Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
New York Giants wide receiver Wan'Dale Robinson (17) reacts to a play during the first half of an NFL football game against the Las Vegas Raiders Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Las Vegas (2-14) will secure the top pick with a loss next week to Kansas City, and quarterback Geno Smith is unlikely to play because of a high ankle sprain. The Raiders’ skid reached 10 games, which matches last season’s streak for fifth-longest in franchise history.
The Giants (3-13), who snapped a nine-game losing streak, could still wind up with the top pick if they lose to Dallas next weekend and the Raiders beat the Chiefs. Interim coach Mike Kafka got his first win after losing his first five, and the Giants had their largest margin of victory since defeating Indianapolis 38-10 in Week 17 of the 2022 season.
“The things we were playing for were each other,” Kafka said. “You get into a football locker room, it's a family. Sometimes you have to go through ups and downs, but you keep plugging away, keep on putting in the hard work and then you'll get the result that you want.”
Dart, taken by the Giants with the No. 25 pick in the 2025 draft, showed his dual-threat ability by passing for 207 yards and rushing for 48 yards and two touchdowns.
An NFL Network report said the Giants were keeping their options open for the draft even at quarterback.
“I know I'm going to be here for a very long time,” Dart said. “I'm just excited to start winning more games and turn this place around and do my job. We have a bright future.”
Wan’Dale Robinson caught 11 passes for 113 yards to become the first player 5-foot-8 or shorter to reach the 1,000-yard mark since 5-7 Richard Johnson in 1989. Robinson also is just the third since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger, according to Sportradar.
“It means a lot,” Robinson said. “I've always been labeled a slight guy that can only do certain things and never hit certain numbers. So I wanted to prove really to myself that I can do everything out on the football field that I need to do.”
Linebacker Brian Burns recorded 1 1/2 sacks, giving him a career-high 16 1/2 for the season.
Smith, again booed in pregame introductions, passed for 176 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions before leaving early in the fourth quarter with the ankle injury. Smith has a league-high 17 picks.
Kenny Pickett replaced him and completed both passes for 16 yards.
Smith's interception in the first quarter set the tone, a red-zone pick by linebacker Bobby Okereke that was returned 48 yards to set up a Giants touchdown and 7-0 lead. That was just New York's seventh interception this season.
The rebuilding Raiders were without a number of notable players, giving embattled coach Pete Carroll nearly a shell of a lineup. Las Vegas went from a 1 1/2-point favorite at BetMGM Sportsbook to a 3-point underdog after defensive end Maxx Crosby (knee), tight end Brock Bowers (knee) and safety Jeremy Chinn (back) were placed on season-ending injured reserve.
Crosby, one of the league's top pass rushers, initially was sidelined just for this game. That decision so upset him that he left the Raiders' facility on Friday. He told reporters earlier in the week that trying to win was more important than securing the top draft pick.
“That’s what we look like without those guys playing,” Carroll said. "Unfortunately, they’re that valuable to us. Everybody tried, everybody did everything they could and all that just wasn’t enough.”
As for his future with the organization, Carroll said he believed he had management's backing.
“What does that mean? I don't know," Carroll said. ”But our conversations have been really good."
But now the Raiders could be in position to draft a potentially franchise-changing quarterback and end more than two decades of playoff futility.
The Giants have their own issues, but hope Dart is worth rebuilding around. The person who coaches Dart next season is a major question.
This is the fourth time the teams with the two outright worst records have met in the final two weeks, according to Sportradar. The previous time occurred in 1981 between the 1-14 Baltimore Colts and 2-13 New England Patriots.
Giants: CB Cor’Dale Flott (knee) did not play. ... S Jevón Holland (knee) was injured in the third quarter.
Raiders: WR Jack Bech (back), RB Raheem Mostert (ankle/knee) and G Dylan Parham (illness) did not play. ... DT Adam Butler (bicep) was injured in the second quarter. ... G Dylan Parham (illness) left in the first half.
Giants: Host Dallas next weekend.
Raiders: Host Kansas City next weekend.
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL
New York Giants linebacker Bobby Okereke (58) celebrates his interception with cornerback Deonte Banks (2) and linebacker Darius Muasau (53) during the first half of an NFL football game against the Las Vegas Raiders Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Las Vegas Raiders defensive tackle Thomas Booker IV (99) tackles New York Giants wide receiver Wan'Dale Robinson (17) during the first half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)
New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart celebrates his touchdown during the first half of an NFL football game against the Las Vegas Raiders Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
New York Giants wide receiver Wan'Dale Robinson (17) reacts to a play during the first half of an NFL football game against the Las Vegas Raiders Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
NEW YORK (AP) — On a recent weeknight, three tenants of an aging Bronx building were trading apartment horror stories inside a packed ballroom lined with city bureaucrats.
The occasion was the third in a series of “rental rip-off hearings,” a new forum launched by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for disgruntled renters to air their complaints directly to housing officials — and in some cases, the mayor himself.
As she waited in line, Gulhayo Yuldosheva said she worried that noxious mold in her apartment had worsened her child’s asthma. Nearby, her downstairs neighbor, Marina Quiroz, was showing a video of rats scurrying through her kitchen to a representative of the city’s tenant protection office.
Ann Maitin, a longtime resident of the same building, had just met with the mayor.
“He let me go over my three minutes,” she said, holding up a spiral notebook’s worth of grievances.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist swept into office on a promise of zealous tenant advocacy, framed the event as a struggle session for renters, assuring the standing room only crowd that their stories would guide the city's efforts “to actually hold landlords accountable when they don’t follow the law."
To the residents of 705 Gerard Avenue, this raised a practical problem: No one seemed to know who actually owned their building.
“It feels like such a basic question,” said Maitin, a retired Verizon technician who recently organized the building’s tenant association. “You’d think we’d have the right to that information.”
Their situation is hardly unique. As corporate owners and investor groups have grown their share of the rental market in New York City, they are increasingly shielding their identities behind limited liability companies, or LLCs.
The practice, which has also been spreading nationally, is legal. But experts warn it could complicate Mamdani’s promised crackdown, making it harder for the city and tenants to track the chronically negligent owners whose buildings the mayor has vowed to target and even seize.
“There are these big slumlords that everyone knows are doing predatory investment, but pinning them down is going to be difficult, for the LLC reason,” said Oksana Mironova, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society. “That’s a problem for the administration, and it’s even worse for tenants.”
For Yuldosheva and her neighbors, finding their landlord is one of many problems afflicting their six-story building near Yankee Stadium.
Heat and hot water outages are regular enough that some tenants keep a thermometer on their fridge and the city’s complaint hotline on speed dial. Common areas are often filthy, and increasingly populated by drug users. Getting help with an urgent maintenance issue “feels like waiting for Christmas in July,” said Maitin.
During a monthslong elevator outage, a tenant who uses a wheelchair, Tommy Rodriguez, said he was forced to “slide down the steps, like a kid.” Calls to the building management about a repair timeline went unanswered, he said.
Growing up in the building in the 1980s, Rodriguez recalled the previous landlord as a friendly and responsive neighborhood presence.
“This felt like a home before,” Rodriguez said. “Now they treat us the same as the rats.”
A large rodent had recently chewed a hole through his couch cushion. He handled the extermination himself, with a two-by-four.
Recently, tenants received a clue about their landlord, following the partial collapse of another Bronx building. The man identified in news stories as the owner of that building, David Kleiner, shared a Brooklyn office with their building manager, Binyomin Herzl.
A handful of tenants visited each of the building’s 72 units, logging an array of decrepit conditions and unusual alterations.
“We didn’t want to become the next news story,” said Yuldosheva, pointing to a crack in the wall of a bedroom shared by her three children — a result, she feared, of the subway that rumbles just below her windows.
Lawsuits show that Herzl has been ordered to pay more than $100,000 for violations across at least six Bronx buildings, several of which were found by a judge to pose an imminent hazard.
Reached by phone, Herzl said he didn't own any of those properties, but simply acted as a middleman between tenants and the true owners, whom he declined to list. “There’s no one landlord,” he said. “It’s a group of investors.”
Kleiner, who was previously featured on the city’s “worst landlord” list, confirmed his partial ownership of 705 Gerard in a brief phone call, but declined further comment.
Herzl, meanwhile, attributed the tenants’ complaints to “normal wear and tear” of a nearly century old building. He said Mamdani should focus on improving the city’s public housing, rather than going after private landlords.
“Our buildings look like five star hotels against his,” he added.
When landlords refuse to address a serious violation, like heat or hot water outages, the city can step in and order repairs, then bill the owner directly.
In the last three years, inspectors have ordered emergency repairs at 38 buildings that list either Herzl or Kleiner as an owner, according to records provided by the city’s housing department. The men have been billed $446,521 for those repairs.
Mamdani has proposed using such fines as a vehicle to bring distressed rental properties under city stewardship, by aggressively pursuing liens on delinquent landlords and buying up their portfolios through foreclosure auctions.
Just as the city can shut down unsanitary restaurants, Mamdani has said, landlords that “repeatedly put New Yorkers at risk will not be allowed to operate in New York City — with no exceptions."
In reality, the process is resource-intensive and legally fraught. It is made more complex by the nest of LLCs often used by landlords to obfuscate the full scope of their portfolios, according to Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.
“It’d be great to have a better sense of who owns the buildings that we are regulating and overseeing,” she said.
State legislation that would have made it easier to identify LLC owners was recently vetoed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul amid pressure from landlords.
Kenny Burgos, the CEO of the New York Apartment Association, a landlord lobbying group, said Mamdani’s tenant proposals — including freezing the rent for regulated tenants — would force landlords to cut back on maintenance and services.
“That’s going to take away from the elevator budget, the boiler budget, the heating budget,” he said. “It’s a question of math: These buildings are crumbling because of policy, not because of bad landlords.”
He characterized the rental rip-off hearings as “show trials” that took a “tribal approach” to the city’s affordable housing crisis.
Despite the combative branding — “New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords,” blares one promotion — the Bronx event mostly resembled a standard constituent service night: City officials fielded questions about local laws, helped residents with paperwork and connected them to service providers.
Maitin left feeling “glad to be heard by someone who can actually do something about the problem,” but felt it was too early to tell “if it’s all talk."
The next morning, she was surprised to find the building’s superintendent applying a fresh coat of paint to a staircase. Outside, workers were removing scaffolding that had been in front of the building for years.
“I think they caught wind of the rental rip-off,” Maitin said. “They’re scared.”
Gulhayo Yuldosheva's children get ready for school in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Francisco Medina, left, cleans his apartment next to his relative, Maria Frias, right, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Gulhayo Yuldosheva, 33 , center right, Marina Quiroz, 65, top, pose for a portrait with other two residents in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Tommy Rodriguez, right, talks to his relative, Francisco Medina, left, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Marina Quiroz stands in her living room in a Bronx apartment building, where tenants report maintenance issues, pest infestations, Tuesday, March 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
