If the Raiders are hoping to move to Las Vegas in time for the 2020 NFL season, they better hope there's not any delay in the construction of the stadium. Otherwise, things could get dicey. 

The Las Vegas Stadium Authority released a preliminary timeline of the stadium's construction schedule this week, and let's just say there's not much room for error when it comes to building the Raiders' new $1.9 billion palace. 

Under the timeline, construction of the stadium is expected to be completed in June 2020. However, that's only going to happen if everything else falls into place. 

Under the proposed timeline, the groundbreaking for the stadium would happen in January 2018. 

At that point, the project would have to be completed in roughly 30 months to meet the June 2020 opening date. 

Thirty months might not be an easy number to hit. The last NFL stadium to be built took 32 months (U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis), while the Falcons' new stadium in Atlanta will likely be a 39-month project. 

The stadium in Atlanta, which broke ground on May 20, 2014,  was only projected to take 33 1/2 months, but that total jumped to 39 months after three separate delays. By the time the stadium opens in August, the project will have been delayed by nearly six months. 

If construction of the Raiders' stadium were to hit that kind of delay, that means the team wouldn't be able to play the 2020 season in Vegas. 

The Vegas stadium authority has a meeting set for May 11, where they'll talk about the preliminary timeline. 

If the stadium were to run into any issues, that could mean the Raiders end up playing one more season in Oakland. Raiders owner Mark Davis has made it clear that he wants to remain in Oakland until the team's lease is up at Oakland Coliseum in 2018. Davis has also said he'd like to stay until 2019, if the fans in Oakland want him. 

"We have two more years of lease options for Oakland right now," Davis said. "If the fans would like us to stay there, we'd love to be there for that and possibly talk to them about extending it for maybe 2019 as well and try to bring a championship back to Oakland."

By the time the team needs a new lease in 2019, they'd probably have an idea of whether they'd need to stay in Oakland for the 2020 season. 

That said, fans in Oakland shouldn't get their hopes up that the Raiders might change their minds about this whole Vegas thing. 

The team just made a huge investment in Vegas: The Raiders paid $77.5 million for a 62-acre chunk of land where the stadium will be located. The land sits west of the south end of the Las Vegas Strip, near Mandalay Bay.