The Oakland Raiders are in the process of kicking off the second half of the NFL season, and as they enter that phase they hold a record of 3-5. At this point in the season, there's no time to make excuses, it's about what you earn in this league. After falling to the Buffalo Bills 34-14 Sunday, the Silver and Black understandably had to look themselves in the mirror and regroup.
Prior to the start of Week 9, here's what members of the Raiders had to say for this week's edition of Tell the Truth Tuesday.
**Head Coach Jack Del Rio
**
"I feel like we've earned this 3-5 through the first half of the year. Nobody is real happy about that. I think we all take responsibility and are accountable for that. We're going to go into the second half and look to make it a whole lot better in the second half. We need to kind of get our mojo back a little bit. It comes down to basic execution in some cases. We certainly feel like we have a good team. I believe that we'll be able to put together a little bounce back here."
Running back Jalen Richard
"It's football, man. Every day is not going to be a great day, you just have to understand that. You're going to have some bad days, it was likely that I was going to fumble someday in my career, so again like I said, it's just football. I have to keep that in my mind as I meet adversity throughout the game. Things are going to happen that I can't control, or things are going to happen because it's just the game of football."
Tackle Marshall Newhouse
"Protection I think was pretty good overall, and even the run game, the runs that we did have, a lot of them popped. In the National Football League you can't give an NFL offense extra chances, and we kept giving them extra shots up at the plate, and that's not how you win football games. There's plenty of good, plenty of stuff to correct, but it's Week 8. Guys have to take it upon themselves to be professionals, we have to hold each other accountable. We have to practice in a more purposeful, and intentional kind of way, and live up, and play up to our talent level."
Safety Shalom Luani
"I feel like I did pretty good, but I was still as you said. There's a lot of room for improvement, each and every day just come in and get ready to work."
Linebacker Cory James:
"We started our pretty good, holding Shady [LeSean McCoy] to 30-something yards, and then it kind of got away from us in the second half. I feel like just the lack of integrity, the defense not making the right plays, not filling our gaps right, not getting off blocks. We came in and made our corrections today, and we're just going to move on from it."
Defensive tackle Treyvon Hester:
"One thing that we can focus on ourselves, as a defense, is just limiting the mistakes, and focusing more on the small, detailed things. The execution part, we need that a lot more, and once we start really making that happen, executing a lot more, we'll see a lot more, better plays happening out there."
