Las Vegas Raiders coaches and players discuss their upcoming game against the New England Patriots.
On facing the Patriots...
"This is a team that played well Monday night, they're playing well. And it's a team that you're going to have to do a good job in all three phases. They play really good complimentary football. Nobody scores more off of turnovers than they do. They force a lot of takeaways. They play really stingy defense. They don't give up a lot of big plays, hard to drive the ball. They make you convert three or four third-downs in a drive, which is always challenging against them. They always have something new for you that you're going to have to adjust to. Their offense has got a lot of talented guys. Obviously, I'm familiar with some of them. Some of them I'm getting familiar with as we watch tape. But they can run it, they can throw it, they've got a lot of different guys that can do a lot of different things. And this is obviously one of the best teams that we're going to play, if not the best team, in the kicking game. So, the returner is having a fabulous year. They have a lot of really good cover players – [Matthew] Slater, [Brenden] Schooler. I mean, there's a bunch of them, and they do a great job in the kicking game every week. And so, we'll have our hands full with all three phases."
- Raiders Head Coach Josh McDaniels
"Playing against the Patriots, Bill Belichick, and their staff and all the players that they have, that's not an easy task. We have to be able to put in the work this week."
- Raiders Quarterback Derek Carr
On the Patriots defense...
"This is a really good group from top to bottom. They have depth, they're physical, they're big inside. They're long. They have a lot of guys that play on the edge; [Matthew] Judon, [Josh] Uche, [Anfernee] Jennings. I mean, they move [Ja'Whaun] Bentley out there sometimes. Deatrich Wise [Jr.] is out there. So, there's a lot of different bodies that they will throw at you in their alignments and in their different defensive packages. It's not only a challenge to handle their physicality, their length, their pass rush – they do a tremendous job in their pass rush games executing the things that they're trying to do – but it's also a challenge individually for our guys because you have to get familiar not with just one guy that's going to line up across from you but it might be three or four different people based on the spacing that they choose to use with their fronts, or the different packages that they're in. So, kind of who's who. Who's across from me? What are his strengths or weaknesses? It might be different than somebody else's. There are some inherent challenges in that, that we're hard at work obviously trying to identify what the different matchups are going to be like and what we need to protect ourselves against. I'd say from top to bottom, this is probably as good a group as we've seen."
- Raiders Head Coach Josh McDaniels
"They're very powerful inside. They do a great job setting the edge on defense, trying to take away those edge runs and those kinds of things. They're really good at that. They do a good job in the two-gap world, taking on double teams. Like I said, powerful guys on the inside with quick, twitchy, strong guys on the outside that can set an edge, can get to the quarterback, can jump inside, can go outside and go through you. Very versatile linebackers in that sense. They can drop, they can rush, they can cover. They can do a lot of things. And so, very multiple, and whenever you have good players like they have with arguably the best coach to ever do it scheming them up and put them in positions to do things, it's a tough task."
- Raiders Quarterback Derek Carr
"It's really just like any other game in the sense that you have an idea of what they're going to do, and then you've got to adjust to what they're actually doing in the game. If it was as simple as just looking at the card and percentages and stuff, we could just have that sent to us and just go strictly off numbers. But at the end of the day, you've got to look at what's the pre-snap picture and then the post-snap picture and then go out and play and make plays. So, it's not really going to be that much different, you can only do so many things. We've just got to be ready for whatever we see on tape and then react to whatever they do."
- Raiders Wide Receiver Davante Adams
On Bill Belichick...
"It's obvious I wouldn't be here, or even in the National Football League, if it wasn't for Bill. Robert [Kraft], Jonathan [Kraft] gave me a great opportunity a long time ago. He's been invaluable to me in a lot of ways. Hard to measure all of them. Obviously, football background, understanding how this league works. I got to see firsthand how to try to do it the right way. His philosophy on everything; offseason, training camp, in-season, postseason, evaluations, draft, free agency. He gave a lot of his time to me, and I was able to hopefully pick up as much as I could. Still got a lot to learn. He was a great mentor for me, not only in football, but also just in in terms of when I got there. I was 23-24 years old, so basically grew up there. Indebted to them forever for that. And getting to go back there after I had my experience with Denver, I think that was really important period of time for me because I knew what I had done and what I had experienced, and I got to kind of take some time and really try to soak in, 'Alright, I know I didn't do that very well.' And now I'm watching him the second time around, and maybe the first time I didn't even know to look for it, and now I'm looking for different things. How he handles adversity, what he's doing here in the offseason, how he's handling the bye week? What's he doing in April, May, June, etc. that maybe I wasn't even clued in on that existed before I left. And so, it gave me a great opportunity to kind of look at it through a different lens and really try to take some time to process those things while I was watching somebody that's obviously the best that's ever done it do it again. The time for me was important for me personally and obviously, like I said, he's always given to me time, attention and information. He's been very open and honest with me about everything, and I wouldn't be standing here if it wasn't for him."
- Raiders Head Coach Josh McDaniels
"It's a unique opportunity. And I would say that I look forward to all these opportunities, they don't come out around often. I know he's going to get his football team ready to play on Sunday at [1:05]. I don't think he's going to care a whole lot about how much he mentored me or what he did and vice versa. And that's not a bad thing. I don't think he would expect anything less from me than to just compete and do everything we can to help our team win, and I know that's what he's going to do. So, I look forward to the competition. I know they do it the right way. Eager to have our team go through our week of preparation here and get ready for a hell of a football game on Sunday."
- Raiders Head Coach Josh McDaniels
