Pete Carroll's Plan to Help Bolster Raiders' Defense

The Las Vegas Raiders' glaring weakness has been poked at early and often by opposing teams this season.

Carroll's Plan at Cornerback

The Raiders' group of cornerbacks has been arguably the team's biggest issue since the offseason. Las Vegas' corners have had their expected struggles, as the unit is relatively young. Trading Jakorian Bennett in the offseason and an injury to veteran Eric Stokes has made the unit even thinner.

The Raiders have turned to cornerbacks Darien Porter and Kyu Blu Kelly to help compensate for those losses. While both have played admirably, Kelly has had his growing pains, while Porter is just now seeing more playing time.

Following the Raiders' loss to the Colts, Carroll explained his approach with Kelly and Porter. Carroll noted that Kelly is going through the bumps and bruises that most young cornerbacks in the league have to go through. Still, Kelly has held his own on gamedays.

"Yeah, just keep working with him. He's doing so many good things, but he is getting the action. And it's interesting, Darien [Porter] played on the other side and really didn't see the ball very much throughout the game,”Carroll said. 

“And so, there's ways to help him coverage wise, there's ways to make sure that we're just keeping him on it. It's just a hair of a difference on him playing from the PI situation that we work really hard on. So, no, we just got to keep getting better. I mean, they're going to get the corner sometimes, and we got to help him as much as we can."

One of the things the Raiders could do to help their young defensive backfield is to create more of a pass rush. Veteran linebacker Devin White explained his desire to see the defense play more aggressively, which should help the Raiders' young corners.

“I just feel like, we had our opportunities, not only for defense, and I feel like third down was a big part of what killed us. When you let an offense keep a drive going, that can hurt. I just feel like we just got to make those plays. We had them in third-and-10, a couple third and get off the field. That's the money down, we’ve got to get it,” White said.