RAIDERS REPORT
Schedule
All practices at Intermountain Healthcare Performance Center, unless noted:
■ Saturday — Off
■ Sunday — at New York Giants, Met Life Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey, 10 a.m.
■ Monday — Off
■ Tuesday — Off
■ Wednesday — Practice, 11:30 a.m.
■ Thursday — Practice, 11:30 a.m.
■ Friday — Practice, 11:30 a.m.
■ Saturday — Off
■ Sunday — vs. Kansas City Chiefs, Allegiant Stadium, 5:20 p.m.
Quote of the day
The New York Giants have been a big part of Raiders interim coach Rich Bisaccia’s life for as long as he can remember.
He even has a favorite joke he likes to tell about his dad being the coach of the Giants in his own mind.
As Bisaccia prepared Friday to fly across the country to take on his childhood favorite team for the first time as a head coach, he downplayed the personal significance.
“If I told you my history with the Giants, you’d laugh,” he said. “I try to do it with that joke about my dad. Fortunately for me at this particular point in my career, we’ve played them so many times that I’ve had an opportunity to just treat it as another game. Maybe that’s fortunate for me. But I do love the Giants as long as we’re not playing them.”
Injury report
The Raiders made it through the week healthy. They don’t have a single player with an injury designation headed into Sunday’s game against the Giants.
“We’ve actually gone through the whole week and nobody got tripped up,” Bisaccia said. “We’re all good to go.”
The Giants aren’t as fortunate.
Star running back Saquon Barkley cleared COVID protocols but was ruled out for a fourth straight game with an ankle injury. Wide receivers Dante Pettis (shoulder) and Sterling Shepard (quad) are out as well. Fellow receivers John Ross (quad) and Kenny Golladay (knee) got in limited practice sessions on Friday and are questionable to play.
Linebacker Lorenzo Carter and defensive back Nate Ebner will miss the game with ankle injuries.
Leaning on experience
Bisaccia took over as interim coach last month during one of the most tumultuous weeks in franchise history.
He barely had time to settle in before things got worse with one of his now-former players facing charges of DUI resulting in death, and thoughts and prayers around the team facility and the city focused on Tina Tintor, the woman who died in the crash.
Bisaccia has shown steady leadership in somehow keeping the team on track with two victories and will look to keep the streak going on Sunday.
“I’m 61 years old,” he said. “I’d like to think along the way, you gain some wisdom and some experience. You go through things whether it’s the family I grew up with or the family of my own now, then being around a lot of players.
“You’d like to think you learn from them, and you’d like to think you can improve and keep moving forward. That’s the message we try to give our players, and you try to live that way to some degree if you can. I just think we all try to learn.”
Through the chaos of the past few weeks, the time on the field has served as some of the only respites. As much as the focus is and should be on the tragic events of this week, the sobering reality is that life moves on, and football is life for the Raiders.
“They’re pro football players, and what do you expect a pro football player to do?” Bisaccia said. “Play football and practice football and prepare to play football. … I just know we’re excited about the opportunity to play football again and get on a plane today and get ready to play on Sunday.”