While the Las Vegas Raiders showed some flashes of what they can be on offense, the same can not be said on the other side of the ball. Josh McDaniels’ team ranked 26th overall in points allowed, 28th in yards allowed, and dead last in creating turnovers.
While Maxx Crosby had another outstanding season and remains one of the league’s premier defensive linemen, there were only minor moments from the rest of the defense. Dave Ziegler has previously spoken about the need to improve the defense and McDaniels is right in line with his general manager.
At a recent press conference at the NFL Combine, McDaniels spoke about his desire to add the right kind of players across the defense, via Silverandblackpride.com:
“That’s — honest to God, it’s — we’re going to try to improve the competition at every position on defense,” McDaniels said. “We don’t — our depth, obviously, is something that we need to improve across the board. But, look, we need tough, smart, explosive players, period. And we need to do that on offense, we need to do it on defense, we need to do it in the return game. We have some good core components to our roster that we can build around. But we need to get tougher, smarter, more explosive, you know, with the people that are coming to our football team.
“And so, there’s not one spot that I would say, you know, is more — that we’re going to stress this more than that. We need to get good football players every opportunity that we can and we’re going to take every avenue to do that.”
While much of the attention this offseason has gone toward the quarterback position, it is the Raiders’ defense that can stand to make a major leap and McDaniels is spot on in that there are needs across the board on that side of the field.
Whether it is another end to take pressure off Crosby, a space-eating defensive tackle who can collapse the interior, a sideline-to-sideline linebacker, a shutdown corner or a ballhawk safety, all would provide a huge boost to the Raiders defense. Overall depth remains a need as well, but a couple more true game-changers would change the dynamics of this team greatly.
Whether it is through free agency, the draft, or a trade, the Raiders have the means to improve this roster, and McDaniels and Ziegler sound intent on doing just that.
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