Following his team's 16-10 Week 5 loss to the Denver Broncos, Oakland Raiders Head Coach Jack Del Rio held his weekly Monday press conference at the team's Alameda, Calif., facility.
Here are the highlights from his time behind the microphone.
The bye week will be used for "self-scouting."
"Self-scouting basically is, you take a look at yourself over the first five games to start the season and see if you're trending the way you want to in terms of developing players, concepts, principles that you believe in. You take a pause and you take a good look at yourself over the first five weeks and make sure that you're on schedule for where you want to be and make any adjustments that are necessary."
He shared his impressions of the team after the first five weeks of the season.
"I know that we've made a lot of strides. I know that 2-3 is not what we wanted it to be. We had hopes it would be better. It's what we've earned to this point. We have a lot football in front of us, so we'll focus on the road in front of us, the work that we have ahead of us and make sure that we're learning what we can from the previous five weeks of experience."
Even in defeat, Head Coach Del Rio can see the team making progress.
"Absolutely you can see some progress in different areas. That was as good as we've played on defense through the start of the year. There have been several bright spots, several areas of improvement, a lot of things that we've worked hard on that are beginning to show themselves, manifest themselves in production on game days. We still know there's a ton of work in front of us."
He was pleased with rookie defensive end Mario Edward's production Sunday.
"I thought Mario played really well… With Mario, I think going in, we knew that with Denico [Autry] being down that he would naturally get more play, and he did a nice job with the snaps he got. He was very effective for us."
Playing in close games each week are invaluable learning experiences.
"You learn from these experiences. We're growing as a staff. We're growing as a football team and we make our corrections on this day, get ourselves prepared to meet with the squad tomorrow. Put it behind us and move on."
