Oakland Raiders Head Coach Jack Del Rio has many sayings, and one of them is, "you get what you earn in this league." Through five weeks of play the Silver and Black are 2-3, which is the first time they've dipped beneath .500 since the 2015 season. Following Sunday's game against the Baltimore Ravens, Del Rio addressed the media and broke down the day's effort.
Here are the quick hits from his press conference:
Del Rio commented on the performance of backup quarterback EJ Manuel.
"Well, we didn't win, so it wasn't well enough to win. But I thought he did a pretty solid job as a backup guy coming into a tough situation and handled himself well. Made a couple of third downs. Kept the drive, couple of key third downs and took them down to their lake to get within a score. We've got to do more defensively to get him more opportunities."
He spoke about the decision to punt on fourth and three late in the fourth quarter, rather than go for it.
"No. It's not easy. Hindsight is always 20/20 on things like that. You're thinking you're going to pin them inside the 10, we didn't. You're thinking the defense will give us a stop and get us the ball back, we didn't. We get the ball back after having to call timeouts on the plus side of the field. It didn't go anything like what it needed to. A fourth down call with nine minutes left in the game, 10 minutes left in the game, was that the difference today? I don't think so."
Del Rio talked about how the defense gets back to its successful ways.
"Yeah, play with more confidence. Fluttered balls in the air, not coming up with them. To me it's a confidence thing."
He also discussed the involvement of wide receiver Amari Cooper.
"I wouldn't say it was by design to have him not have him get more targets. The read went away from him a couple times. A couple of times, it went to him. I'd like to see him get the ball more. To me it's about execution right now. I'm not going to sit here and get into how, why, individuals aren't getting or doing. I don't see where that's going to help us."
Photos from the Raiders Week 5 match-up against the Baltimore Ravens.
Del Rio shared how the team handled being down early to the Ravens, and how they were able to stick with the game plan.
"I thought we stuck with the plan pretty well. Continued to run the ball. At the end of the day, we had a lot of efficient runs in the game, which was a positive. That's what we really wanted to be able to do today, run the ball efficiently. Play good defense, be the better team today, we didn't get that done. But I thought despite being down like that, I didn't feel like we got away from the plan or abandoned the plan. I thought we stuck with it. Established some things. Kind of clawed our way back to within one score. Just not able to close it from there."
