WR Rod Streater runs through the tackle against the Green Bay Packers.Photo by Tony Gonzales
The 2014 preseason is approaching its latter stages, as the Raiders are preparing to take on the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday in their final tune-up before the regular season kicks off on September 7th.
The third of the four preseason games usually provides a good measuring stick for a team to see where they stack up with their competition, as well as an opportunity to make the necessary adjustments to their scheme prior to the beginning of the regular season.
With their match-up with the Green Packers now in the books, DL Antonio Smith saw multiple positive signs from the Raiders as a whole.
"There are always positives," said Smith. "There are always good things to take out of a game, good lessons taught in a game that you experience like that and good things to give coaches teaching tools. There were a lot of good things that can be taken from it."
In particular, WR Rod Streater was encouraged by the Raiders rushing attack, which totaled 77 yards on the ground in Green Bay, including an impressive touchdown run from Maurice Jones-Drew.
"We ran the ball well," Streater said. "I felt like we did a good job of getting up and down the field. It looked good out there. I felt like we could run the ball. We could throw whenever we wanted to. We just have to clean up penalties and get more consistent."
On the defensive side of the ball, rookie LB Khalil Mack had his best showing of the preseason, totaling two tackles for loss and an interception of Packers QB Matt Flynn.
Even when reflecting on his impressive evening, Mack was still focused on the areas that he can improve to become even better in 2014.
"It was an okay day," Mack said. "I still have to get fundamentally sound and take care of my job in certain areas of the game, but all around I did some things that can build up my confidence a little bit."
He also noted that after their match-up with the Packers, there were a multitude of positive takeaways for the defense to carry into the regular season.
"It was a good building block, playing against a great offense and playing against a great quarterback in Aaron Rodgers," he said. "He pushed us. He pushed the pace. The tempo was very fast and that's something we haven't seen yet. It was a good test for our defense to see what we can really go up against and see how well we played against a great quarterback."
As is the case in the preseason though, there are still areas that the team needs to improve upon before their game against the Jets, but Streater sees all their errors as correctible mistakes.
"That's the good thing about it, and that's a pretty good team [Green Bay], to see us go out there and hang with them," Streater said. "It's a positive sign, but we can't just go out there and mess up like that against the Green Bay Packers. We can't do that. We have to play cleaner. It looks good for the future for us as long as we can clean up all that stuff."
The Raiders are focused on their last preseason test this Thursday against the Seahawks, but are also keeping one eye on the Jets and the start of the regular season.
"Oh yeah, we're ready," Streater said. "We're not going to look past Seattle, but we know we have two weeks until the Jets so we're getting ready for that too."
With just under two weeks to go until the regular season officially gets underway, the Raiders have time and game opportunities to fine-tune their scheme and give Raider Nation something to cheer about in 2014.
