It may have been a change of play style for the Raiders camp, but who controlled things remained the same. The defense continued to dominate.
I asked Antonio Pierce prior to practice who he expects will benefit the most from pads going on, and he said the offense without question. And he brought in a special guest last night to try and get them pumped up for it.
“If I had to predict today, I think the offensive line is going to get after it,” said Pierce. “Richie Incognito talked to the team last night. It was pretty intense. Whatever you think he said, he said.”
The offensive line certainly came out with intensity. In the early going, Andrus Peat pancake blocked Tyree Wilson to the turf. And midway through practice Thayer Munford injured his hand on a play, only to get it wrapped up and return to the field a bit later.
As far as how the rest of the offense performed, it was…not great.
The talk the offense had been doing prior to today was that of ‘just wait until pads go on.’ Well pads were on and thus far they have not backed up their words.
No question the Raiders have a very good defense. It shows for sure. But the issues with the offense go well beyond the quality of defense they’re facing.
Mostly it continues to be the quarterback play that plagues the offensive play for the Raiders in camp. The passes are just not getting to the receivers consistently.
I could count on one hand how many solid completions there were on the day. O’Connell had one good connection on a deep corner route to Jakobi Meyers.
Other than that it was a whole lotta bad for the offense.
The defense was flying around, swarming, and jawing all day long.
The closest Davante Adams came to making a play was a pass that looked like it might get there, but he had his jersey tugged on, drawing a pass interference call. And Tre Tucker simply could not get open.
Play after play, Tucker had a defender on his hip. Sometimes it was Jakorian Bennett, sometimes it was Nate Hobbs, and once it was Jack Jones. But it didn’t matter. The result was the same. Incomplete.
It wasn’t until the final drive of the day that the offense got anything going at all. It was Gardner Minshew running the offense. Kristian Fulton had a leaping grab over the middle, then DJ Turner caught one on a cross, and finally Minshew found Alex Bachman on an out to put the team at the 18 for a field goal. It was a relative positive in a day without much before that.
For the defense’s part, they were fired up and stopping everything, including the ground game. Adam Butler had a couple stops and he was sure to let the offense know on each of them, barking at them and running into the backfield to taunt them. Christian Wilkins did some dancing and talking as well.
The one thing you didn’t see much of were turnovers. There were two fumbled handoffs, one between O’Connell and Zamir White and the other between Anthony Brown and Brittain Brown. Jack Jones nearly had a pick on an ugly O’Connell pass after he was basically sacked by Maxx Crosby.