Quick Hits: Consistency remains area of concern for Raiders heading into Week 10

Nov 07, 2022 at 01:25 PM

Levi Edwards

Digital Team Reporter

Following the Las Vegas Raiders loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, the team continues to buckle down on finding a recipe for consistent success.

Finding success isn't something the Raiders lacked early on Sunday, going up 17-0 in the first half. However for the third time this season, the 17-point lead crumbled in the second half – as more questions for Head Coach Josh McDaniels arise on how his team can find a way to finish out games.

"[I'm] tired of talking about this a lot on Mondays, but it is what it is," McDaniels said in his opening statement Monday. "We'll try to learn the hard lessons again today and see if we can't make some progress."

Read through for more quotes from Coach McDaniels' Monday morning media availability.

Related Links

On red zone defense:

"[E]ventually it's all my responsibility. So, I think there's something to be said for that. We need to figure out how to put ourselves in positions to maybe keep somebody from putting it in, obviously in those types of scenarios, creating some type of a negative play would be important to us in those situations. But certainly, that's not good enough for us, especially if we're playing a bunch of tight games, which we've been in a lot of them, win or lose. Those are the sequences that ultimately end up factoring into the winning or the losing, whether you on offense or on defense. I think we had a couple chances yesterday to add to our lead, and then they had a couple opportunities, and they converted on some of theirs and we missed one of ours."

On potential scheme changes moving forward:

"[W]e're going to try to address and figure out what do we need to do to shift the results, and some of those things might be very minor. Look, you change the result of four plays yesterday, it probably changes the game, and that's how every game is when it's that tight. I definitely am not going to go in there and panic and say we need to uproot everything we've done. That's not really the right thing to do. There's things we're doing very well, there's things that we need to do better. I think for us, try to figure out what those are and then address them, and address them in the right way."

On the difficulties of the team in the second half:

"I think it's not just one thing. I think at the end of the day, we've learned that the games can switch quickly, they can. And we've been on the wrong end of that so far. But those things can shift around pretty quickly if you don't do a lot of the right things. The Kansas City game was very similar to one yesterday, where we had a lead and then all of a sudden, we kind of lost the momentum of the game. Score at the end of the second quarter, score at the beginning of third quarter and then before you know it, the game is entirely different game, which is not abnormal to the National Football League, it happens. What we need to do in that situation is be able to respond and stem the tide and go regain the momentum for ourselves with doing our job."

On what he'd like to see more of from the team:

"[W]e got off to a really good start throwing a football yesterday, protecting the passer. Made some big chunk plays in the in the passing game. Obviously, Davante [Adams] was significantly involved in the game at that point in time, and were able to put it in not in the red zone, which is a good thing. Defensively, I thought we started the game with the right mindset of trying to bottle up [Travis] Etienne and not let him get loose on the edges and those kinds of things. Again, it's consistency and it's doing the right thing over and over and over again and not having lapses in anything that we're doing. That's really what we need to do. But we've had stretches in every phase where we've played very good football. We have to look to those as opportunities for us to say, can we do that more and can we do it more often, and can we do it on a consistent basis and try to ultimately produce more victories and stringing something together here."

On if young players could get more snaps:

"I think they've got to earn that. All of them practice and get repetitions, not just on the scout team, but also in our defense, our offense, our kicking unit. Everybody works in there and takes repetitions. I think that's just been the model that we've used and have tried to promote the competition on our team with. I think as you go through the season, there's a lot of reasons why people get opportunities – injuries, performance, practice – so on, so forth. We'll just try to do the right thing and be diligent with our evaluation of that. And if there's somebody that has earned it, then we absolutely would give them an opportunity to perform and go in there and do something in the game and see what happens."

On handling adversity moving forward:

"You're never going to go through a season and not have to handle adversity. We know that. So, I trust our leadership, I trust our captains, I trust our locker room. And they don't have to feel good about losing. People ask me, 'Are you concerned with them?' No, I'm not concerned with them. They should be pissed off. We all are. Losing sucks. But I think ultimately, at the end of the day, our responsibility is to one another in terms of doing our job, putting our head down and working. There's only one way to get through this and that's to work hard and earn the right to win."

1 / 80

A view of TIAA Bank Field before the Las Vegas Raiders' regular season away game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.