How Raiders' Chip Kelly Is Conducting Brock Bowers' Impact

For a partial transcript of his comments, read below.

Q: With Brock Bowers playing hurt or out for several games this season, how tough was it trying to get in the system you want to get in? 

Coach Kelly: "It is, it's just the NFL though. I think everybody understands that. I don't think there's anybody in the league right now that hasn't lost players that were starters for them. That's just the nature of the game we play, and you have to be able to adjust and adapt. Your depth is going to get tested at all times. And so you just have to adjust to it.

You don't sit there and say, 'Boy, I wish we had him.' We'd love to have Brock [Bowers] in every game. We'd love to have Kolton Miller in every game. I think people forget what an integral player he was. He was playing as good as any offensive tackle in the league before he got injured, so that's the shuffling that goes on there. But it's part of it, and I think I'll give our players a ton of credit. They've done a great job adjusting. 

“And, 'Hey, we've got to do this.' And really, you'd like to say from a week-to-week basis we're building and growing in this direction, but when you lose a player all of a sudden, the offense has to change slightly, because there's a newer player in and you're trying to play to his strengths and maybe hide his weaknesses as opposed to another player.

This player may have excelled at this, and that was a big part of the game plan. Well now that he's out, you've got to kind of morph to a different thing. Even though we'd really like to continue to do that, I don't know if we can do that, because we don't have that player at that position." 

Q: How do you manage the balance between making sure Brock Bowers isn't force-fed in coverage, but also making sure he gets more opportunities? 

Coach Kelly: "Yeah, it's the same thing. We have to get him involved. He's obviously our number one threat out there, and we've got to continue to get him involved in terms of what we do. Jacksonville and New England were a good example. We didn't do a good job, I didn't do a good job in the Denver game. 

“A lot of those plays that were supposed to go to him, we got sacked on. Part of that was the protection and what Denver could do defensively going in. We knew they had a great pass rush, and so we were in a little bit more max protection.

And now you're not being able to uncover him sometimes, so you allow them to double them and do those other things. Part of their scheme allows them to do that too. But we're real conscious of what do we have available this week, and how do we how do we have to get the ball to those guys."