Day 3 of Training Camp practice is a wrap and Defensive Coordinator Gus Bradley brought his high-energy personality that Raiders players have expounded on all week to the podium.
Bradley gave some insight into the competition at slot corner, discussed the impact of the new veterans on the team and stressed the importance of consistency on the field.
Here are some of the best soundbites from Friday's media availability.
On bringing energy to practice:
"We've got a lot of good guys on the defensive side, a lot of good spirit, coaches. I think that it helps that there's a lot of familiarity with the coaches as far as understanding scheme stuff, so with that there is a lot of trust, and you can let loose a little bit. Hopefully players have a lot of juice too at this time, they're excited."
On the impact of veteran players on and off the field:
"These guys know what it looks like and when they're on the field they are just another set of eyes other than the coaches to share with the players what it looks like, and that's always a good thing in my mind."
On DE Yannick Ngakoue:
"He's always been a pro. I mean a meticulous notetaker. You wouldn't know that about Yannick. He's in there. Attention to detail. He's a very, very prideful man and he's always been that part of it. I think what I'm seeing him do more now is he's helping everybody. He's helping younger players. It's very important for us to be a strong unit, those type of conversations with him. But he's very focused."
On the competition at free safety and slot corner:
"Although it's high-tempo walk through, we have not really seen full speed and that's what we're really kind of waiting to see. ... Once we get pads on we're hoping some of those things become clearer, but right now we put a lot of install in the first two days, probably at a faster rate than what we normally have done defensively, but it's with the hopes that from this point on now they can concentrate on being physical when we get the pads on and just playing fast."
On the potential of the high draft picks in the secondary:
"There is talent back there, but consistency breeds credibility, and if they play consistent then we are going to start seeing coaches trust them more. And that's what we're working on right now."
On the mindset of the defense:
"I think in our philosophy of our defense, it's a precision league, and we need to be very precise in what we do. And because of that we need to tackle well, we need to zone drop well and we need to understand situational football very well so that we can continue to play fast. That's what we're preaching and really with the number of young guys we have, like you were saying at the secondary and corner spots, it's a race to maturity for them. We've got to speed everything up and try to get them to act like sixth- and seventh-year veterans."
