DT Desmond Bryant sacks QB Brady Quinn. Photo by Tony Gonzales
Head Coach Dennis Allen
On stopping RB Jamaal Charles: "I think every game is different and you don't know how the game is going to play out. I think our guys did an excellent job of getting prepared this week. I think they did a great job of executing the game plan. We were able to stop a very talented running back."
On dominating line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball: "Yeah, I felt like up front that we did a nice job. I thought we were able to run the ball effectively. We were able to control time of possession, which I think was critical in our defense being able to play as well as they did. I think we had 40 minutes time of possession in the game, so that was outstanding as far as keeping our defense fresh."
On posting a shut out: "It's hard. It's been 10 years since it's happened here. It's extremely hard to shut anybody out, doesn't matter who they are. I think that's an accomplishment that we take great pride in."
On significance of the shut out to this defense: "I think it's big. I think it's huge. I think our guys needed something where they get a little bit of confidence. I thought they had a great week of practice. I thought they were totally focused in on what we needed to do and how we needed to play to win this football game. I thought they did a great job of executing it out there today."
On plan for Terrelle Pryor's play time: "The plan was to get him in the first series of the 2nd quarter and then kind of let the game play out from there. We went three-and-out in that series and I thought we were doing some nice things with Carson [Palmer] and nice things in the run game and we just stuck with the plan."
On lack of touchdowns: "Obviously we want to score touchdowns and not be able to get field goals. At the end of the day, we're trying to win football games and we were able to do that today. We'll go back; we'll analyze what happened when we were able to get down there and we'll see what we need to do moving forward. But right now, we're going to be pleased with winning a football game 15-0."
On if quarterbacks were fighting an illness: "Both Carson and Terrelle both woke up this morning sick. A little bit of a flu bug I guess has been going around."
On plan for Pryor going forward: "I think we'll see in a game-by-game basis, but our thought was to try to get him a little bit of game experience, so at least he got in a football game. It's been awhile since he's played, so we'll look at that going forward. How much he plays, I don't know the answer to that exactly, but we'll see that on a game-by-game basis."
On injury updates: "Phillip Adams went out with a concussion. Juron Criner had a hip and then Mike Mitchell went out with a neck. He was actually cleared to go back in the game; I just chose not to put him back in the game."
On if Denarius Moore had an injury: "Denarius Moore? I didn't get any report on him having any issues."
On if the play-calling was conservative in the red zone: "No, I don't have a challenge with the play-calling at all. I think we did the things we had to do to win a football game and that's what we were able to do."
On Darren McFadden: "I thought he looked good. I thought our offensive line did a great job of creating some seams and opening up some holes, giving him an opportunity to run the football. I thought both those backs that we handed the ball to, they got the ball downhill. They did a nice job of breaking a couple of tackles. I thought we ran the ball effectively."
On getting the ball back right away and kicking a field goal after missed field goal: "I thought the way that we handled that in that situation, I thought we handled that outstanding to be able to get the field goal there, to throw the ball to Brandon Myers and him making a great catch on the sideline and get out of bounds and still be able to get the field goal; I thought that was huge. To be able to get up nine points with the way our defense was playing, I thought that was really big."
On if McFadden and [Mike] Goodson have different enough styles to be change of pace: "I think so. I think both of them were a nice change up. I thought, again, I think we rushed for 197 yards or something like that, I don't know exactly what that stat was, but we ran the ball effectively and that's what we felt like we needed to do to win this game."
On locker room atmosphere after the game: "The guys were excited. Anytime you get a chance to win in this league, it's huge. We've faced some adversity this year. We've had some tough luck, but those guys in there, they've continued to compete; they've continued to battle. I'm glad and happy for them that we were able to get a win. Now we've got to put this one behind us and keep moving forward."
On giving out game balls: "We haven't had an opportunity to give out a lot of them, but we're going to get that opportunity when the players get back in on Wednesday. It'll be a good feeling."
On the mood in the locker room before the game: "I think our guys understood exactly what we had to do to win this game. I think they were focused in. I think they felt confident going into this game and I think it showed out there on the field."
On McFadden being upset after being stopped on 3rd-and-1: "Just competitive emotions in the game. And that's the way it ought to be. He wants to get the first down; we didn't get it and he was upset about it. I have no challenge about it at all."
On if it's time for deep assessment for next season: "No, we've got two more games left this year, so we're trying to win football games this year. Obviously, we've already said we want to try to take a look at some of these younger players, which we were able to do a little bit today. We'll continue to do that as we go forward throughout the rest of the season. But we're trying to win football games."
On if they need to see Pryor in games more to evaluate him: "We've got a little bit of an idea of what we have in him. I'd like to get him in to games more often. But again, I'm letting game situations dictate who plays, when they play, how they play. This isn't just put everybody in and let them go. We want to see him play. We want to see him work, just like we do all the young guys, but we're trying to win football games."
On which young guys stood out today: "It's hard to say without really getting a chance to look at the tape. I know [Rod] Streater made a nice play on a third-down conversion. Brandian Ross is a guy that I thought went in and played pretty well under the circumstances. So those are just a couple of guys, but without really watching the tape, it's hard to really say."
On Rolando McClain inactive: "Just we felt like we wanted to go with some other guys and we'd have him inactive this week."
QB Carson Palmer
On the win: "Good defensive win. We know it was a battle and our defense outplayed them. It's good to get a win against a team that's also struggling and get on to the next one."
On being under the weather: "Just something that was going on with the team. Every couple of days been getting a bug, but everything is fine."
On red-zone play: "You want to score. Obviously you want to get in the end zone but you could just tell the flow of that game, we just needed to keep preserving the time of possession, continue to run the ball to keep the clock going. We had a pretty good feel that the defense was going to do what they did and we didn't want to give them a chance so that was the last we wanted to do. We did give them a chance with a fumble at the end, but didn't want to take any risks, take any shots just because we knew that [Sebastian Janikowski] was probably going to convert more often than not and that they were going to have a tough time scoring and moving the ball on us."
On the running game: "Just persistence, having a good game with Goodson coming in, get different blocking schemes going, get different personnel group on the field. [Offensive coordinator] Coach Knapp really did a good job at changing it up and keeping them guessing which way we were running and what runs we were doing. Just persistence. We kept running, we kept grinding. There's going to be a negative run here and a 1-yard run here, and then there's going to be an 18-yard run or a 4-yard run, so we just stuck with it and kept grinding."
On needing the win: "Tremendously bad we needed this. We've been on a slide for a while and just good to get a win and continue out for the rest of the year."
On difficulties getting into the end zone: "We had had a defensive end just straight jump up and tip the ball on third down early on in the game. We kept trying to run it in there and it's a good run defense. We did end up with 200 yards [rushing]. We kept trying to push the ball in the end zone and just didn't do a good enough job at converting those third downs there."
On Terrelle Pryor: "I thought he did good. He didn't get much of a shot, didn't get much of an opportunity and I know that he's been waiting and wanting one. But I thought he did good. He only had two run plays and a pass play that obviously didn't work out because of good coverage and good job on defense. I thought that he did well."
QB Terrelle Pryor
On his playing time: "We had it set at just one series. It was set that I had the first series of the second quarter so it's just a stepping stone. I enjoyed the four plays, or whatever it was, but it's a stepping stone and I was excited to get in there at least."
On his expectations for the rest of the season: "Whatever Coach has planned and whatever he wants to do, I'll be ready. Right now I'm a team player and whatever they need from me I'm going to do just so we can win; we have two games to win. I love learning from the guy right here (QB Carson Palmer) and I wouldn't trade it for anything else. When the time's right I'll be ready but I just love learning from him, there's not much else I can say."
RB Darren McFadden
On the game: "This feels great. Just for guys to go out there, still laying it on the line and showing people that we haven't laid down, we're still going to go out there and fight every down. Today we were out there running the ball and we did a great job at it today."
On the success of the running game: "We felt like a good job running the ball against them the first time around so we just wanted to come out here and give it a shot again today, and it was working for us."
On sharing time with RB Mike Goodson: "I feel like we did a great job of rotating. Coach did a good job of rotating us so it worked out perfect for us."
RB Mike Goodson
On losing his footing during a would-be TD run: "As soon as I got back to the sideline DA [Dennis Allen] told me 'don't cut off your inside foot.' I tried to make a play off my inside foot but after that, on all my other runs, I cut off my outside foot and it helped out."
On sharing time with RB Darren McFadden: "It gives D-Mac a break. He takes a lot of carries, a lot of hits, and when he's out there fresh he can go the distance on any run."
On the game: "It's huge. You need every win but it's good to get this one. I'm sure the guys feel good, if I can speak for them; it makes the team feel good."
T Khalif Barnes
On the game: "Despite what our record is, any time you win a game in the NFL, it's hard work and it's hard to do and it takes a lot of work. It takes 60 minutes from everybody so I feel good about that; we haven't done that in a while so I think everybody feels good about it."
On the success of the running game: "Just guys out there grunting and straining and being committed to their blocks. I think Mike Goodson played a hell of game and Darren McFadden; they were making their backside reads and their cuts well and they were running hard and they weren't getting down on the ground after first contact. They were running from contact and making spectacular runs; even if we would miss a block they would make up for it so we were working in unison together."
DT Desmond Bryant
On snapping the losing streak: "Over the course of the six weeks, the taste in our mouths just kept getting worse and worse and worse, so to finally be able to get rid of that, it feels really good. We know that this is a good win, but at the same time we'll enjoy it tomorrow, but then it's right back to work. We've got a challenge in front of us next week and we've really got to come out strong and show the league. We'll be ready."
On shutting out the Chiefs: "It's a great, great thing for us to be able to go out and get a shutout. Since I've been here we obviously haven't had any kind of shutouts. I don't even know how to say it; it was awesome being a part of that. The energy that we had in the stadium, it wasn't exactly full, but the fans were behind us. We were out there playing all together, it felt really good."
On the success of McFadden and Goodson in the running game: "As a defense, that's what you're looking for; you're looking for your offense to go out there and put together some long drives, run the ball and keep us off the field, keep us fresh so that when we are out there we're able to execute and be able to rest to the best of our ability. It was a great feeling, great day for the whole team. It was a great team win."
DE Lamarr Houston
On the shutout: "A shutout is great. To get that goose egg on the board, it's the best feeling in the world. It hasn't been done in 10 years around here and we're happy to do that today and get this team going in the right direction."
On stopping the run: "I think it's about a mindset when you're stopping the run. It's 50-50, like I told them, it's a mindset and it's partly scheme. If we come out with our minds right we can stop anybody, and if we don't people are able to make runs on us, so I think it's as simple as that."
On if this game proves the Raiders have the players they need to win: "Yeah, games like this prove we have what it takes to win, we just need to go out there and try to execute every game."
On if maintaining the shutout was talked about during the game: "No, there wasn't a lot of talk about it. We were just trying to win; we were just trying to play hard, and that happened to be the end result."
DE Andre Carter
On what the defense did to stop the Chiefs: "I just think, in general, first things first, we just stopped the run. Despite what their record is, they had a strong run game. When you stop the run, you rush the passer; it's easy to say, hard to do, but we were on point. We were communicating real well, we knew where everybody needed to be and that was something that was emphasized during the practice week and we pretty much executed for four quarters."
LB Philip Wheeler
On the win: "It feels really good, especially to dominate like we did on defense. It's the same team we played earlier in the season and we saw their weaknesses and we took advantage of them."
On the Raiders defensive dominance: "We always want to go in and execute plays, and I feel like we executed top notch today. We executed all the plays well until they started getting something in the second half. We just took advantage of their weaknesses, like I said. We had seen them before, earlier in the season, and we knew who they were, their weaknesses, and we took advantage of them. We smelled blood."
On whether the offense came after him or he just stepped up and made plays: "Coach was telling us we need people to step up and make plays. I think everybody actually stepped up today and made plays. It was just my turn, and I felt good about it."
LB Omar Gaither
On what the defense did to stop the Chiefs: "We wanted to stop 25 [RB Jamaal Charles]. We feel like that's kind of the workhorse. If we could get him stopped, which I feel we did today, then we have a good chance of winning the ball game. We got him stopped and we won the ball game."
DB Michael Huff
On posting a shutout: "Coming out in the second half we knew we were playing well and we knew we had to come out and stop the run. We knew they would try to run early but if they didn't score then they couldn't win so that was our motto coming out of the half."
On stopping the run game: "Thank the D-line, the front seven – they did all the work. I don't think I had any tackles today, I think Tyvon [Branch] had like two and Matt [Giordano] only had like a couple so any time the secondary isn't tackling it's a great day."
S Tyvon Branch
On what he thinks the Raiders did on defense that made them so effective: "We stopped the run. When you stop the run in this league and just shut down the pass, we played good against the pass and guys were hitting the quarterback every other play, it seemed like, and we just played good team defense."
On stopping the Chiefs on fourth-down plays: "It definitely felt great. It's our last home game; we had a rough season, it isn't going like we wanted it to, so we wanted to go out there and make a statement and tell our fans we're still playing hard, we're still playing with that same passion."
On K Sebastian Janikowski: "He can kick it from anywhere, it seems like. The offense did a great job running the ball, moving the ball. D-Mac had like 50 carries, it seemed like. They did a great job, and Jano was just knocking them down."
On the injuries in the secondary during the game: "We've got guys that play corner, nickel, joker, safety; I think Brandian Ross played like seven positions today, so I'm proud of him and the way he played. He stepped up and played big for us."
