Raiders Defense

[NYRaider]

2 hours ago, drfrey13 said:

I agree 100%.  Bradley has me optimistic but being a Raider fan makes me pessimistic.  I do not think Bradley is a top DC but should see a dramatic improvement over Guenther. 

Bradley should definitely be an improvement and he has a solid track record of developing guys. Based on our moves and coaches comments, doesn't seem like we're very high on Arnette though.

[MrOaktown_56]

5 hours ago, Darbsk said:

I always thought it made no sense to draft a guy whose forte was press man and who obviously struggled playing off and in zone and then play him off and less aggressively. Especially when there were other, higher graded CBs available that fit better what we did with him.

I wanted Jaylon Johnson precisely as he was much better reading the QB and playing off like I thought we would eventually use our CBs, Arnette needs to be up on his guy, getting hands on them and being physical. 

He looked OK to me when he could get his hands on the receiver, good against Tyreek Hill I thought, and that is a tough assignment so he does have some promise.

He has promise but now we have a new DC who may not play to his strengths. Just goes to show how much hiring PG set us back. I already like our defensive drafting more with Bradley. Maybe we would have taken better defenders with him at the helm.

[MrOaktown_56]

3 hours ago, Darbsk said:

Yeh, I know we go through the phase of optimism after a change of coaching staff but for the first time in a long while I genuinely feel that we may have a good DC and defensive coaching setup in place. Of course, I'll half expect to be disappointed but maybe, just maybe Bradley is the guy to at least get us back to average. He's saying all the right things and he has a decent track record. He didn't ride on another guys coattails or just step in to an already setup defence like Guenther so I think we can be justifiably optimistic this time.

I think Richard Smith and Ron Milus will be a big help too.

[Dodo]

Not getting optimistic about anything until results are on the field. I remember the excitement of 2016 signing Irvin, Sean Smith, Reggie Nelson. We all saw how that turned out

[NYRaider]

4 hours ago, MrOaktown_56 said:

I think Richard Smith and Ron Milus will be a big help too.

Hopefully Rod lives up to his hype as an elite DL coach as well. 

[MrOaktown_56]

10 minutes ago, NYRaider said:

Hopefully Rod lives up to his hype as an elite DL coach as well. 

If he can get better production out of everyone I'll take it. Especially cle. I want him to becom a disruptive inside outside player.

[NYRaider]

4 hours ago, Dodo said:

Not getting optimistic about anything until results are on the field. I remember the excitement of 2016 signing Irvin, Sean Smith, Reggie Nelson. We all saw how that turned out

The year we signed all of those guys we went 12-4. Our defense wasn't great statistically overall but we were 2nd in the league in takeaways. Irivn had 7 sacks, Nelson had 5 interceptions, and Smith had 2 interceptions, lol. And we were running a fairly similar scheme under KNJ who's a Bradley disciple. 

I'm cautiously optimistic about our defense this season. Bradley is a much better defensive coordinator than KNJ and I think from an overall talent perspective we're better this year then we were in 2016. Obviously we don't have a Khalil Mack on the defensive line. But Irvin was never a huge sack guy and he was moving from OLB to defensive end and was still pretty productive. Yannick is a perfect fit at edge in Bradley's system and has been one of the most consistent pass rushers in the league since his rookie season. Smith was a tad younger but Hayward is definitely a much better player than Smith was at any point in his career. Reggie Nelson 33 years old and on his last legs at that stage of his career while Moehrig is a rookie that looks to be a plug and play guy. 

Obviously we'll need guys in our front 7 to step it up but I like the potential of Yannick and Crosby off the edge. Our starting DL in 2016 was Mack - Jihad Ward - Dan Williams - Bruce Irvin and our main 3 LB's were Perry Riley, Malcolm Smith, and Cory James. 

I think our projected front 7, even without a dominant player like Mack projects to be better with a DL of Crosby - Thomas - Hankins - Yannick and our 3 main LB's of Littleton, Kwit, and Morrow are definitely better.

[drfrey13]

19 minutes ago, NYRaider said:

I'm cautiously optimistic about our defense this season. Bradley is a much better defensive coordinator than KNJ and I think from an overall talent perspective we're better this year then we were in 2016. 

The question is not whether he is better than KNJ but rather is he better than JDR.  KNJ is just a motivator who admitted himself that he is not a big Xs and Os guy. Has KNJ ever been the top defensive coach on a team?  I believe he has always coached under a defensive minded head coach.

[NYRaider]

1 minute ago, drfrey13 said:

The question is not whether he is better than KNJ but rather is he better than JDR.  KNJ is just a motivator who admitted himself that he is not a big Xs and Os guy. Has KNJ ever been the top defensive coach on a team?  I believe he has always coached under a defensive minded head coach.

That's true but with JDR like half of his defenses have been good and the other half have been below league average over the course of his career. Bradley helped transform the Seahawks defense from one of the worst in the league into a defensive powerhouse in his 4 years there. In the two years before Bradley took over with the Chargers they ranked 21st and 29th in points allowed. In his first year there they jumped all the way up to 3rd in points allowed, were 8th in his second season, 13th in his third season, and 23rd in his 4th season. But they had so many key pieces out with injuries in years 3 and 4. And this was while he was coaching under an offensive minded coach in Anthony Lynn.

[MrOaktown_56]

1 hour ago, NYRaider said:

The year we signed all of those guys we went 12-4. Our defense wasn't great statistically overall but we were 2nd in the league in takeaways. Irivn had 7 sacks, Nelson had 5 interceptions, and Smith had 2 interceptions, lol. And we were running a fairly similar scheme under KNJ who's a Bradley disciple. 

I'm cautiously optimistic about our defense this season. Bradley is a much better defensive coordinator than KNJ and I think from an overall talent perspective we're better this year then we were in 2016. Obviously we don't have a Khalil Mack on the defensive line. But Irvin was never a huge sack guy and he was moving from OLB to defensive end and was still pretty productive. Yannick is a perfect fit at edge in Bradley's system and has been one of the most consistent pass rushers in the league since his rookie season. Smith was a tad younger but Hayward is definitely a much better player than Smith was at any point in his career. Reggie Nelson 33 years old and on his last legs at that stage of his career while Moehrig is a rookie that looks to be a plug and play guy. 

Obviously we'll need guys in our front 7 to step it up but I like the potential of Yannick and Crosby off the edge. Our starting DL in 2016 was Mack - Jihad Ward - Dan Williams - Bruce Irvin and our main 3 LB's were Perry Riley, Malcolm Smith, and Cory James. 

I think our projected front 7, even without a dominant player like Mack projects to be better with a DL of Crosby - Thomas - Hankins - Yannick and our 3 main LB's of Littleton, Kwit, and Morrow are definitely better.

This is definitely the most talented defense we've had in years. I'm pretty high on the secondary/LB group. I'm still disappointed in the DT group. I wanted us to draft a guy or sign a real proven vet. Atkins, Short, and Casey are all on the market. We should bring in one of them IMO and then see who makes it out of camp.

[Mr Raider]

1 hour ago, MrOaktown_56 said:

This is definitely the most talented defense we've had in years. I'm pretty high on the secondary/LB group. I'm still disappointed in the DT group. I wanted us to draft a guy or sign a real proven vet. Atkins, Short, and Casey are all on the market. We should bring in one of them IMO and then see who makes it out of camp.

Agreed. I just said in another post DE is probably the spot I am most confident in being improved this off season that will translate to a jump in play. I think Yannick will have a big impact allowing guys like Crosby, Ferrell, Koonce, etc to all play more complimentary roles instead of banking on them to be THE guys. 

But the lack of any real proven commodity on the interior could just as easily cause that improvement and impact to be totally wasted. I kind of get the approach. A bunch of young, athletic guys that could potentially have their best football in front of them some playing potentially out of position in former stops and such, but I would feel more confident about that approach had we brought in one proven veteran, even if they are someone that probably doesn't have more than a year or two left in the tank of starting caliber play. Shortt, Atkins, Richardson, Reed, Casey, etc. One of those guys would have made the DL a unit that could be very good overall. I like what we have on the edge, but the interior is nothing but question marks. And we all know just how impactful high level play inside can be for a defense and how damaging it can be to get inconsistent or nonexistent play inside. 

If the defense doesn't take a step or two to becoming at least slightly below average instead of the total train wreck last year I will be surprised. If that ends up being the case though I am confident the areas we will look at as the main culprit is a total lack of any type of consistent play at DT, among the worst in the league, and CB will be the other big issue. Hayward will prove to be washed, Mullen will still battle inconsistency, in part because of a lack of any other solid corners, Arnette will show zero progress, along with the rest of the super young and unproven guys. And like we have seen countless times, it's entirely possible those areas can feed one another and contribute to both spots looking poor. Leading us to debate on whether both are the main problem going hand and hand or if one unit is making the other look worse. Safety could be a similar story, but I think Moehrig even with the typical rookie up and downs will give us better play than what we got last year. And Joseph and Gillespie will keep us from being forced to leave Abram on the field even when he's a liability because we have zero other options so even if the S spot isn't substantially better it'll be more consistent. 

[drfrey13]

56 minutes ago, Mr Raider said:

Agreed. I just said in another post DE is probably the spot I am most confident in being improved this off season that will translate to a jump in play. I think Yannick will have a big impact allowing guys like Crosby, Ferrell, Koonce, etc to all play more complimentary roles instead of banking on them to be THE guys. 

But the lack of any real proven commodity on the interior could just as easily cause that improvement and impact to be totally wasted. I kind of get the approach. A bunch of young, athletic guys that could potentially have their best football in front of them some playing potentially out of position in former stops and such, but I would feel more confident about that approach had we brought in one proven veteran, even if they are someone that probably doesn't have more than a year or two left in the tank of starting caliber play. Shortt, Atkins, Richardson, Reed, Casey, etc. One of those guys would have made the DL a unit that could be very good overall. I like what we have on the edge, but the interior is nothing but question marks. And we all know just how impactful high level play inside can be for a defense and how damaging it can be to get inconsistent or nonexistent play inside. 

If the defense doesn't take a step or two to becoming at least slightly below average instead of the total train wreck last year I will be surprised. If that ends up being the case though I am confident the areas we will look at as the main culprit is a total lack of any type of consistent play at DT, among the worst in the league, and CB will be the other big issue. Hayward will prove to be washed, Mullen will still battle inconsistency, in part because of a lack of any other solid corners, Arnette will show zero progress, along with the rest of the super young and unproven guys. And like we have seen countless times, it's entirely possible those areas can feed one another and contribute to both spots looking poor. Leading us to debate on whether both are the main problem going hand and hand or if one unit is making the other look worse. Safety could be a similar story, but I think Moehrig even with the typical rookie up and downs will give us better play than what we got last year. And Joseph and Gillespie will keep us from being forced to leave Abram on the field even when he's a liability because we have zero other options so even if the S spot isn't substantially better it'll be more consistent. 

Beyond a new DC, DT is going to be the key next year.  If we can not get any production up the middle or Hankins misses time I do not see Bradley being able to turn this ship around next year.

[RaidersAreOne]

Can't wait to see what this kid has got.

[roi34]

safety depth is nice to have for change as well as CB. 

Cle will be used inside I think which will help. 

[Frankie2Gunz]

On 6/25/2021 at 4:51 PM, NYRaider said:

The year we signed all of those guys we went 12-4. Our defense wasn't great statistically overall but we were 2nd in the league in takeaways. Irivn had 7 sacks, Nelson had 5 interceptions, and Smith had 2 interceptions, lol. And we were running a fairly similar scheme under KNJ who's a Bradley disciple. 

I'm cautiously optimistic about our defense this season. Bradley is a much better defensive coordinator than KNJ and I think from an overall talent perspective we're better this year then we were in 2016. Obviously we don't have a Khalil Mack on the defensive line. But Irvin was never a huge sack guy and he was moving from OLB to defensive end and was still pretty productive. Yannick is a perfect fit at edge in Bradley's system and has been one of the most consistent pass rushers in the league since his rookie season. Smith was a tad younger but Hayward is definitely a much better player than Smith was at any point in his career. Reggie Nelson 33 years old and on his last legs at that stage of his career while Moehrig is a rookie that looks to be a plug and play guy. 

Obviously we'll need guys in our front 7 to step it up but I like the potential of Yannick and Crosby off the edge. Our starting DL in 2016 was Mack - Jihad Ward - Dan Williams - Bruce Irvin and our main 3 LB's were Perry Riley, Malcolm Smith, and Cory James. 

I think our projected front 7, even without a dominant player like Mack projects to be better with a DL of Crosby - Thomas - Hankins - Yannick and our 3 main LB's of Littleton, Kwit, and Morrow are definitely better.

It's pretty sad that we had the number 4 overall pick 3 years ago, Ferrell isn't a sure fire starter and is now considered a rotational piece.  You want to know why we are considered the worst D of the decade?  This is a prime example....  Don't get me started on Arnette either.