Raiders post game thoughts

[AZ54]

First and foremost I have to say that there is something different with this coaching staff. Week to week I keep seeing improvement in the quality of play, both individual and team (i.e. being in the right position). As of right now we have the 7th ranked defense in terms of yards given up per game. That is surprising to me. The offense is way back in the low 20's but has still been productive with Cutler at the helm.

 

Normally when you get new schemes either offense or defense there are learning curves and mistakes but there are also plays that you run that other teams aren't prepared for. Around the 4th game is when the surprise starts to wear off and teams figure out how to match up to what you are doing. I think some of that helped us against the Packers. Our team has had the growing pains with mistakes but despite teams being better prepared for what we do, we are still improving. Next week on the road in KC will give us a good idea where we are headed. Anyway, off to game thoughts.

 

Offense:

Cutler - Noticeably limited in his movement and it affected him when he felt pressure and had to move around. Late INT was a good decision followed by a bad throw with a guy right in his face. OTOH a great drive and cool under pressure to go down the field late and win the game. Overall a good game. This offense is limited inside the redone without White and Jeffrey. Nobody is worried about a fade pass to Royal or Wilson. Getting that option back on the field will help in the redzone.

 

Oline: Charles Leno held up. It wasn't perfect, not necessarily good either, but this was not the J'Marcus-Webb-at-LT performance I was expecting. I can only remember one blatant miss where he overstepped Aldon Smith's rush. Consider also that on the first play series we lost our starting C and Slauson moves away from Leno for the rest of the game and is backfilled by Omameh who has been with the team just 4 weeks. I expected having those two guys on the left sdie protecting a QB who can't run was a recipe for disaster like in years past. Didn't happen. We gave up 3 sacks but for the most part Cutler had time to move away from his first read. Run blocking started off strong but faded later in the game. Overall a good effort and I go back to the coaches getting these guys ready to play. Nobody even talks about Kyle Long anymore because nobody is worried about him at RT. He's not perfect but he's good and that says a lot for a guy just 4 games into a position switch.

 

WRs: Marquess Wilson finally showed up. Nothing great but his first consistent performance along with an excellent difficult catch as the sideline on the game winning drive. Hopefully he will build off this going forward. Without Jeffrey the group overall is nothing anyone will fear but they at least did enough to keep the passing game productive. Cam Meredith continues to get some snaps.

 

TE: I still like Bennett and prefer to keep him around long term. He is the stabilizing force in our offense right now either through solid run blocking, pass protection, or as a receiver. Lee had a couple bad penalties and it would be nice to see us start spreading the ball around to guys like Miller.

 

Defense:

Overall we held Murray to just 3.1 yards per rush, meanwhile early favorite for "offensive rookie of the year" Amari Cooper was held to just 4 rec for 49 yards with 1 TD by a secondary missing two starters (Ball, and Rolle left the game early). After putting up 300+ yards against Baltimore and Cleveland, Carr had just 196 yards today and looked inaccurate under pressure. Find a Raiders fan who expected that coming into the game.

 

Dline: From where we were the last two seasons to where we are now ... nobody predicted it. We're competitive now and more importantly we have guys making some plays in the backfield. I now know that Eddie Goldman can run faster than I, or Derek Carr, thought possible. Despite missing Ratliff (I don't think Sutton played either), Jenkins continues to flash the potential that had him picked in the 2nd Rd four years ago. We don't know what Ratliff will bring to the table once he gets back on the field but right now I feel pretty good about having Ratliff, Goldman, Jenkins as our starters with Ferguson and Sutton in the rotation.

 

LBs: McPhee is the energizer for this group. He backs up his words with his play on the field and I believe it is impacting other players positively. I didn't notice Houston or Acho on a lot of plays but again the overall performance of the defense was solid and they contributed. SMC is ok. He's not the weak spot anymore as he was in years past. He's also not the strong point of the defense. He was in the right spot in coverage to force a high pass that (just barely) ended up being caught out of bounds and prevented a TD. Jones had his Bostic moment and over-ran one short pass play giving up a TD. Both ILB's support on running plays is improving.

 

CBs: Ball was out and Porter got the start on the outside. Porter played well and we'll be seeing more of him. Fuller is improving. Holding what was a pretty good Raiders passing attack to less than 200 yards was not expected (at least by me) and we have to give these guys credit. Coverage across the board, Fuller included, has improved and is also part of what is leading to some sacks.

 

S: Rolle left the game and we brought in the rookie Jones-Quartey who was cut by the Cardinals. I can't really say what we lost in that switch because the defense looked the same or better with JQ in there. Maybe someone else can comment on how JQ played.

 

-----------------------------------------------

Looking ahead I think we match up well against KC if we can get Jeffrey back on the field. They haven't looked good so far this season but they will be looking to right the ship with a win at home. Their Dline can generate pressure so Oline is a concern. Do we go with Slauson/Omameh or Grasu/Slauson?

 

The Chiefs offense has done:

 

(summary of Chiefs vs. Bengals)

Coming into the game, the Chiefs offensive line had surrendered a league-high 14 sacks on the season.

 

On Sunday, they allowed 5 sacks and 9 quarterback hits.

 

Travis Kelce is the real deal and so is Jamaal Charles. Keep Alex Smith nervous and he'll seek out the early dump off routes even when there isn't pressure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DABEARSDABOMB]

Good summary. One thing I want to point out is how physical Amos is. For a late round rookie, he seems to find himself on the ball and he looks like a good tackler.

[scs787]

All really well said AZ. I certainly wasnt expecting the secondary to hold their dynamic passing attack to under 200 yards (stacked Carr and Cooper on draftkings). Very encouraging stuff. Gonna be an interesting 12 games upcoming. If Ratliff comes back hungry and the play of most everyone else holds, the D could be a lot of fun to watch.

[AZ54]

Good summary. One thing I want to point out is how physical Amos is. For a late round rookie, he seems to find himself on the ball and he looks like a good tackler.

 

 

I agree on his improvement. He is starting to show up at the right spot and on the underneath stuff he closes on the ball very quickly. The drop off from his speed to Rolle's is noticeable such as on Amari Cooper's TD catch. If that was Conte on the deep coverage instead of Rolle we'd have two threads dedicated to blasting his "late as usual" coverage skills.

[adam]

With the new schemes, we should continue to improve as the season goes on, and if we get some guys back from injury, we should see even more improvement.

 

I think we saw flashes of what we could do in the first few games, but this was the first real game where you can see our game plan control the game/clock.

 

My biggest concern going forward is our special teams, we can't give the other team great field position and then back ourselves up when we get the ball.

 

Also, ref: Porter:

 

Stat of the game -- #Bears CB Tracy Porter in coverage vs. Amari Cooper: Three catches, 23 yards.

 

One more to add #Bears CB Tracy Porter vs. Amari Cooper: 0 catches in the second half.

 

Adam Jahns ‏@adamjahns 4m

[bowlingtwig]

With the new schemes, we should continue to improve as the season goes on, and if we get some guys back from injury, we should see even more improvement.

 

I think we saw flashes of what we could do in the first few games, but this was the first real game where you can see our game plan control the game/clock.

 

My biggest concern going forward is our special teams, we can't give the other team great field position and then back ourselves up when we get the ball.

 

Also, ref: Porter:

 

 

 

Adam Jahns ‏@adamjahns 4m

Yeah it's extremely sad that Gould had to do those pop up kickoffs. Because it's a big sign he can't kick it out of the end zone and bigger problem is that we can't trust the coverage team

[jason]

Yeah it's extremely sad that Gould had to do those pop up kickoffs. Because it's a big sign he can't kick it out of the end zone and bigger problem is that we can't trust the coverage team

 

I LOOOOOOOVED that. It's exactly what I called for last week. It makes sense. Better a short kick with minimal/no return than a deep kick with a huge return.

[bowlingtwig]

I LOOOOOOOVED that. It's exactly what I called for last week. It makes sense. Better a short kick with minimal/no return than a deep kick with a huge return.

Unfortunately it puts the defense in a bind early with the short fields all the time.

[jason]

Unfortunately it puts the defense in a bind early with the short fields all the time.

 

Better than the alternative of REALLY short fields as a result of long kick returns.

[CrackerDog]

Better than the alternative of REALLY short fields as a result of long kick returns.

 

Sometimes punters can handle the "kick the shit out of the ball and though the endzone" detail. I wonder why this isn't being explored? Hell, I think Ditka used Mongo for kickoffs back in the day, no?

 

All I want is the ball kicked so hard the other team starts on the 20 consistently.

 

Also, to add one thought to this thread, I was surprised the Bears only had 5 penalties because I still felt like they had too many. I guess they were poorly timed or something. I was listening in the car on the radio and not watching.

[AZ54]

Sometimes punters can handle the "kick the shit out of the ball and though the endzone" detail. I wonder why this isn't being explored? Hell, I think Ditka used Mongo for kickoffs back in the day, no?

 

All I want is the ball kicked so hard the other team starts on the 20 consistently.

 

Also, to add one thought to this thread, I was surprised the Bears only had 5 penalties because I still felt like they had too many. I guess they were poorly timed or something. I was listening in the car on the radio and not watching.

 

Two of those penalties were bad calls. Royal dropped the ball after a catch and got flagged for spiking it One of the CBs had his hand barely graze a face mask, maybe one finger nail touched it, and they flagged him for hands to the face.