How the Bye Week Helped Raiders QB Geno Smith Reset

For a partial transcript, read below.

Q: In what ways did the bye week benefit you? 

Smith: "Just give your body a little bit of rest. Get about two or three days off just getting rest. And also get a chance to study extra tape. You get a few extra days to catch up on your opponent, try to study and develop a game plan to go out there and execute. And so, it was a good bye week for me personally. I was able to, like I said, get my body right, watch a ton of film, watch a ton of football, and kind of just reset, reset your mind and get ready for the rest of the season." 

Q: Are you seeing the same things Pete Carroll is seeing in terms of the running game making some progress? And if it's the case, how much does it ultimately help you with your performance? 

Smith: "Yeah, I think we're all making progress. I wouldn't just single off the running game. I think we've got to be better in the passing game as well. There's a lot of areas that we need to improve on, and again, the bye week gave us a chance to do some self-scouting to really take those hard looks in the mirror and just figure out what we need to do to be better on all sides of the ball and all phases of the ball.

So yeah, the run game obviously is the quarterback's best friend. We want to be balanced. We want to establish the run. We want to control the line of scrimmage, and you do that by running the ball. And then you also be efficient, stay efficient, stay on schedule. All the things that you talk about when you talk about just playing good team football, it starts with the running game." 

Q: When you did self-scout the passing game, what were the takeaways you had? 

Smith: "Some good things and then some things that we have to improve on. Obviously, the main thing is protecting the football, keeping the ball out of the defense's hands and making sure our defense is able to rest on the sideline and not have short fields to play with. And then just continuing to be efficient, getting that explosion back that we kind of had to start the season, but also taking what they give us and being efficient, and just overall developing and learning.

Again, we're still learning each other, and now it's that point of the season where you start to either get better you get worse, and so we're going to get better as a team, and I'm really, really excited about that."