Raiders' Josh McDaniels Wednesday Silver and Black Update

Head Coach Josh McDaniels

Q: The defense is ranked 25th in both points allowed and yards allowed. What do you want to see happen to have them turn the corner going forward?

Coach McDaniels: “You know, it's not a one thing fix, and rankings sometimes can be at times misleading, but we are what we are. And I think that this is a collective effort to play better all around. I'd say our run defense at times has been very good, and then other times we've given up some yards when we've allowed the other team to run the ball like New Orleans did on Sunday. And then our pass defense, pass defense is a 11-person job; it's not really just the coverage, just the rush, you could pressure, those kinds of things. So, defense is always a collective effort; 11 guys have to do their job the right way and make it tough on the offense. I think creating some turnovers, which we haven't really done a very good job of that, if we could do that, certainly that would help limit the number of plays the other team ends up with. So, trying to work at some of those things is obviously going to be a help. And I also think playing complimentary football where the more you're on the field, the more you give up. And so, offensively, I think there's a role the offense plays in all those numbers as well. And, again, Sunday was not a very good example of complimentary football. We've had stretches where we played very well together, and that's what we need to get back to.”

Q: What are some of the challenges of getting more opportunities and thus more production out of Davante Adams?

Coach McDaniels: “I think the defense always has an opportunity to try to use schemes to limit players, there's no question that that happens. He's seen that his whole career once he started being a very productive player. And so, you have to try different things, play multiple positions, there's a lot of ways you could attempt that. And at times, the defense will still try to double or put two people or more around somebody, that's happened to him. It's happened to Hunter [Renfrow] at times, it's happened to Darren [Waller] some when those guys were out there earlier in the year. It’s part of the process; I also think being productive away from him. I've always felt like if a player gets double teamed, if you're productive away from the double teams, then that forces the defense to consider how much they want to continue to do that. So, I think the performance and production of others, when the defense wants to put so much attention towards one player, always weighs into trying to limit how much that happens. Again, we'll try to do the best we can to help him continue to be productive, and at the same time, we need to be able to do other things in our offense when they choose to do that, to try to be productive and move the football.”

Q: Mick Lombardi yesterday talked about the staff did not do a good job of conveying a sense of urgency to the players. At this level with so much on the line, does it concern you that the players needed to have that sense of urgency conveyed to them, and didn't just have it?

Coach McDaniels: “I mean, you all have to have it. This is the National Football League and, look, our job is to prepare and win. You know, that's what we get paid to do. So, if you need a big pep talk, or a big speech, or anything like that to get yourself excited to compete at this level, that's always a potential issue. But I felt our players, they were ready to practice last week. I thought they had a good week of practice and preparation. That has not been our M.0., that has not been our identity this year. And we're going to work very hard to make sure that we don't allow that to happen again going forward. Again, I think there's a lot that goes into performances when you don't play very well, and usually there's a lot of little things that you can do better. So, we're hard at work and making sure that we try to eliminate some of those things and do better the things we didn't do well enough.”

Q: I know you've talked after the game about kind of the issues that you've had on first down and falling behind schedule each drive and each series. Were you able to identify maybe some consistent themes of what went wrong on first down? And maybe how those can be fixed going forward?

Coach McDaniels: “Anytime you fall behind, either the defense created a play, or you made a mistake of some sort to put yourself in that position. And really on Sunday, it was a lot of penalties and we had one or two negative runs, and then a couple sacks that put us in those situations. So, we've made a concerted effort to try to limit some of those things, obviously. And when we play penalty free and on schedule, we have our most success, there's no question about that. So, we're going to have to do a good job of keeping our hands inside, not holding, or creating negative scenarios for ourselves, because we had about 12 or 13 plays in the game where we needed 13-or-more yards to go to get a first down. And that's really never a good formula to play offense with.”

Q: Talking again about Davante Adams; how exotic or how strange are these coverages that you're seeing? Because Derek Carr and Davante both have said that they're used to each other, but they're not used to seeing the types of coverages that they've seen playing together at this level.

Coach McDaniels: “I mean, it is what it is. Look, there's only so many ways you can try to double somebody, but there's definitely a significant awareness on the defense’s part to, I would say, put two defenders on him, over top, what have you, to try to prevent the ball from being thrown there quickly. And again, like I said, the best way to force that to settle down a little bit, is for others to be productive, whether that's running the football or throwing it to somebody else. And creating enough plays where the defense can't just settle on one person and try to do that. So, again, it'll take all 11, and it's never just one thing. This isn't the first time that I've coached with guys that get double teamed or get some attention like that. So, playing good offense means being able to be productive doing a lot of different things, and that's what we need to be able to do. We've done that in stretches this year, certainly didn't do enough of it at all in any phase on Sunday. But we've done that pretty much in each game at some time or another, and sometimes stretches longer than others, but we need to be able to do that more consistently.”

The Raiders travel to Florida to take on the Jacksonville Jaguars next Sunday. That game kicks off at 1 p.m. EDT (10 a.m. PDT) and can be seen on CBS.