The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Raiders Week 1 Edition

RL52TheGreatest said:

I really hope that we're done drafting Michigan players. Not one of those draft picks has been anything more than mediocre and they're a wasted pick every time.

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Simba said:

WR: Really no complaints here today. The guys did well with the opportunities they were given. Only notable thing is that I'm surprised we saw so little of Proche.

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Simba said:

Positional thoughts now that I have some time and am not on my phone...

QB: I find it hard to blame Lamar too much here. He needs to do a better job at protecting the ball but there's only so much you can do with the horrid performance of the OL. He did slip mechanically a few times but for the most part, the ball came out well. Give him some time in the pocket like we did in 2019 and I feel like he could hit another level.

RB: The inexperience in this offense showed. Williams ran well but looked tentative at the mesh point numerous times. I also think he got nicked a little bit, leading to him sitting for much of the 2nd half. Murray looked fine but clearly uncomfortable. Hopefully a full week of practice leads to some improvements here.

WR: Really no complaints here today. The guys did well with the opportunities they were given. Only notable thing is that I'm surprised we saw so little of Proche.

TE: Andrews was quiet but it also seemed like that was in the Raiders game plan. The drop in OT sucks but it is what it is.

OL: We've beaten this one to death but AV was hot garbage and Stanley looked really rusty, although that one should be expected. Zeitler had a rough game as well. I think Bozeman was overall pretty fine, and Powers stepped in and did solid work like much of last year.

DL: Not much interior pressure outside of Campbell, who still can wreck things albeit with much less consistency now. Madubuike and Washington were quiet. Williams plugged the holes per usual. Just nothing to write home about here.

OLB: Not much going outside of Oweh, who shined on occasion. I thought McPhee looked ultra slow. Houston had a few shining moments but disappeared a little too often. Bowser didn't get anything going.

ILB: Queen looks a lot more comfortable. Still marred by inconsistency but he's developing. Thought Harrison struggled a bit out there but again, don't think they were necessarily the issue.

DB: Tavon Young was the bad here. He just didn't look comfortable, and as mentioned last night, I'm glad they moved to more Westry and Stephens. I thought the secondary as a whole played well. The stats look bad but only so much you can do when you sell out for the blitz that often. Thought Elliott had some big struggles as well.


It's weird typing this up, knowing we gave up 33 points and still finding it hard to find too many glaring weaknesses on the defense. The pass rush wasn't there of course but the odd case where it's a heavy coaching failure as well.

If you didn't believe it before, the next draft should be heavy in the trenches if they don't get this shit fixed though.

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rossihunter2 said:

seems like both KC and us lost the orlando brown jr trade (albeit Oweh looked pretty great in his first game)

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JoeyFlex5 said:

Yeah I’m fucking sick of the Michigan picks. I was never one to write off a prospect due to their school, the ozzie bama connection I thought was a strong one, but I literally feel like Jim is feeding John bad intel on prospects to spite him, we have a 100% miss rate on Michigan prospects and frankly they’ve all been so bad that they all should’ve been released in their rookie preseasons. Yes that includes wormley and bredeson.

If Jim is giving John info then how the fuck did we take bredeson over onwenu? 5 minutes of film study would show that onwenu is a higher ceiling and more nfl capable prospect in general.

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rmcjacket23 said:

The weakness for the defense begins and ends with pass rush, and sadly, I'm not sure anything else matters. They simply can't get pressure rushing 4 or even 5 guys.

The differences in the defenses, with neither being tremendously effective, were day and night. Vegas practically never blitzed, and made life uncomfortable for Lamar with 4 and 5 man pressures. Which, of course, then makes it seem like receivers can't get open, because the Raiders can drop 6 or 7 guys into coverage. That allows double teams and brackets over certain players.

The Ravens can basically do none of that. They have to bring 6 guys to get any pressure in most cases. Raiders adjusted in second half by going 3-4 wide every play. That forces the Ravens to play man coverage, and if the Ravens decided to blitz, they have to leave an open man to do it.

With Peters (and maybe with Jimmy), you could get away with this a lot more. My question for the next few games is can guys like Averett and Tavon and Westry handle man coverage, with no help, so the Ravens can recklessly blitz to create pressure?

If the blitz isn't working, change the way you do it, or stop doing it. It's probably sacrilegious for Wink to even think this way, but I think our defense would have been exponentially better off rushing 4 and dropping 7 in coverage. Even against 4 wide, I don't think the Raiders have the horses at receiver to make you pay. You can still double Waller and maintain deep coverage while playing man.

Sure, Carr could have pitched a tent back there in that scenario, but he was beating the blitz all night for chunk plays.

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RL52TheGreatest said:

I hadn't even thought of Proche until you mentioned him. Crazy that he didn't get more playing time after having an impressive off-season.

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Simba said:

And I think that's part of the issue to some extent. Again, you should know me by now that I am not a blame the coaches guy at all but I thought Wink was a massive failure. The pass rush was a failure as well but you can't keep going to the same well trying to generate something and leaving the big plays open like that.

So I think we're in agreement. The defense was massively flawed and that stat book shows it, but I think the issue would get put on the wrong people just looking at the surface.

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Simba said:

Positional thoughts now that I have some time and am not on my phone...

QB: I find it hard to blame Lamar too much here. He needs to do a better job at protecting the ball but there's only so much you can do with the horrid performance of the OL. He did slip mechanically a few times but for the most part, the ball came out well. Give him some time in the pocket like we did in 2019 and I feel like he could hit another level.

RB: The inexperience in this offense showed. Williams ran well but looked tentative at the mesh point numerous times. I also think he got nicked a little bit, leading to him sitting for much of the 2nd half. Murray looked fine but clearly uncomfortable. Hopefully a full week of practice leads to some improvements here.

WR: Really no complaints here today. The guys did well with the opportunities they were given. Only notable thing is that I'm surprised we saw so little of Proche.

TE: Andrews was quiet but it also seemed like that was in the Raiders game plan. The drop in OT sucks but it is what it is.

OL: We've beaten this one to death but AV was hot garbage and Stanley looked really rusty, although that one should be expected. Zeitler had a rough game as well. I think Bozeman was overall pretty fine, and Powers stepped in and did solid work like much of last year.

DL: Not much interior pressure outside of Campbell, who still can wreck things albeit with much less consistency now. Madubuike and Washington were quiet. Williams plugged the holes per usual. Just nothing to write home about here.

OLB: Not much going outside of Oweh, who shined on occasion. I thought McPhee looked ultra slow. Houston had a few shining moments but disappeared a little too often. Bowser didn't get anything going.

ILB: Queen looks a lot more comfortable. Still marred by inconsistency but he's developing. Thought Harrison struggled a bit out there but again, don't think they were necessarily the issue.

DB: Tavon Young was the bad here. He just didn't look comfortable, and as mentioned last night, I'm glad they moved to more Westry and Stephens. I thought the secondary as a whole played well. The stats look bad but only so much you can do when you sell out for the blitz that often. Thought Elliott had some big struggles as well.


It's weird typing this up, knowing we gave up 33 points and still finding it hard to find too many glaring weaknesses on the defense. The pass rush wasn't there of course but the odd case where it's a heavy coaching failure as well.

If you didn't believe it before, the next draft should be heavy in the trenches if they don't get this shit fixed though.

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rmcjacket23 said:

Snap counts are out. Duvernay played a lot more than Proche, who barely played (less snaps than Cannon even).

Pass rush rotation looks pretty mixed, so can't blame lack of get-home on fatigue seemingly.

I didn't notice during the game, but ya'll called it out... Tavon got replaced pretty quickly it looks like. Played 24 snaps, which was the same as Stephens and a good bit less than Westry. One has to wonder if he gets relegated to a gameday inactive if/when Jimmy gets back, as the snap loads would seem to indicate he's potentially the 5th Corner when Jimmy gets back.

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rossihunter2 said:

on both sides of the ball it felt schematically like we were still in preseason mode... everything was pretty vanilla

on offence we didnt have many wrinkles, didnt weaponise motion a ton and basically just ran power out of heavier sets and passed out of wider sets - the raiders were giving us empty boxes when we spread personnel but then didn't take the opportunity to run into those boxes

on defence we didnt see a ton of at-snap or post-snap coverage rotation, we saw very little deception when crowding the line and we didnt run a ton of stunts - wink has typically historically always run blitzes behind stunts etc. to create deception and conflict but it felt like so much of it last night was just numbers

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rmcjacket23 said:

I thought the same. Even on our first offensive drive, I'm like watching us, and I'm thinking to myself "is Roman intentionally showing them nothing so that we can show the goods later on?".
It just never happened. It had the look on both sides of the ball as if certain injuries basically destroyed our ability to do what we want to do, and our coaching staff just mailed in the game prep and gave a bland playbook to everybody and said "have at it".

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rmcjacket23 said:

I thought the same. Even on our first offensive drive, I'm like watching us, and I'm thinking to myself "is Roman intentionally showing them nothing so that we can show the goods later on?".
It just never happened. It had the look on both sides of the ball as if certain injuries basically destroyed our ability to do what we want to do, and our coaching staff just mailed in the game prep and gave a bland playbook to everybody and said "have at it".

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JoeyFlex5 said:

That’s exactly what I was thinking. Seems like they were totally unable to adjust to losing all of their rbs in a week and a half span, and wink made no changes despite losing one of the best corners in the league and having a scheme that depends on having that guy.

now I don’t think missing peters was our problem last night, but you get what I’m saying.

my question is how come ngakoue does fuckall here and is a menace in Vegas? I’m starting to really wonder if winks scheme has just been figured out and any OC who can design a max protect type of game plan will just eat his lunch every time. Gruden took wink to the wood shed, the same way Andy Reid does, every single time.

With Houston, Campbell, madubuike, and Oweh, I feel like we should be seeing better results, these guys aren’t sorry pass rushers, what is holding them back so badly?

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rossihunter2 said:

i do think injuries may have played a part - the lack of practice time with the backs we just added and the fact that ty'son probably didnt have many (if any) of 1st team reps until JK went down means the mesh point's a massive risk - which massively reduces the effectiveness of the rushing offence which in turn is more likely to put us behind the chains - add to that the fact that nick boyle still isnt back and the rushing attack looked super simple

defensively im surprised we were so basic - MP's loss obviously impacted things somewhat but we still sent numbers in the rush and there's no reason we couldnt throw in more stunts etc.

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rmcjacket23 said:

Agree. Defensive vanilla scheme is inexcusable to me. If Peters changes the whole way you play, then our depth isn't what we thought it was.

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JoeyFlex5 said:

That’s exactly what I was thinking. Seems like they were totally unable to adjust to losing all of their rbs in a week and a half span, and wink made no changes despite losing one of the best corners in the league and having a scheme that depends on having that guy.

now I don’t think missing peters was our problem last night, but you get what I’m saying.

my question is how come ngakoue does fuckall here and is a menace in Vegas? I’m starting to really wonder if winks scheme has just been figured out and any OC who can design a max protect type of game plan will just eat his lunch every time. Gruden took wink to the wood shed, the same way Andy Reid does, every single time.

With Houston, Campbell, madubuike, and Oweh, I feel like we should be seeing better results, these guys aren’t sorry pass rushers, what is holding them back so badly?

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