Raiders’ D-line forced to adjust
Without Irvin, young unit gets even younger
On Friday, a day after the Raiders were beaten 34-3 by the 49ers, head coach Jon Gruden called together the team’s rookie class for a brief meeting, defensive end Arden Key said.
“He was just telling us that he needs more from us rookies — we need more, more, more,” Key said. “Said we’re doing pretty good but we need more, we need to lead the league in effort.”
For the three rookies on the Raiders’ defensive line — Key and defensive tackles Maurice Hurst and P.J. Hall — that message became more applicable the following day when the team waived defensive end Bruce Irvin.
Irvin had a reduced role in recent weeks, playing nine snaps against the 49ers, but he had a team-high three sacks for an Oakland defense that has seven all season and was a rare link to the team’s recent past. With Irvin gone, the Raiders’ defensive line unit does not feature one player who started a regular-season game for them last season.
“Each week it seems like there’s something new that we’ve got to get over, new obstacle, new adverse situation,” said defensive tackle Frostee Rucker. “But that’s part of pro sports. It’s part of life. Guys have to adapt, new guys have to step up. It’s always about the next man up. And right now, this has been the key to our season, is the next man up.”
In May, Irvin visited the Raiders’ rookie minicamp and met with the recently drafted defensive linemen, calling on them to contribute immediately to a pass rush that, at the time, was expected to include edge rushers Khalil Mack and Irvin.
On Monday, Hurst said that in the time since he had “learned a lot of pass-rush techniques” from Irvin. Key naturally gravitated toward Irvin, a fellow edge rusher from the Atlanta area.
“Bruce was my guy,” Key said. “That’s my mentor, that’s who I came in here expecting to see. And I took a lot of things from him.
“One major thing was basically, on Sunday, go out and be you, play you. Coaches are here to coach throughout the week. But on Sundays, play instinctive, do what you do, and whatever you do, play 100 miles per hour.”
Results, though, had not followed. Ten players have more sacks this season than the Raiders’ entire roster. According to Pro Football Focus, the Raiders’ defense has generated 59 quarterback pressures — no other NFL defense has fewer than 100.
In a response, the Raiders signed two free-agent defensive ends Monday: Jacquies Smith and Kony Ealy.
Smith, 28, was released by the Cardinals after Week 3. He compiled 13.5 sacks from 2014 through ’15 in Tampa Bay but suffered a knee injury in 2016 and has played in just seven games with no sacks since the start of the 2016 season.
Smith, who took Irvin’s spot on the Raiders’ roster, said the time since his knee injury has been “very frustrating” but that he feels “the best I’ve felt in a very long time — now it’s on me to go out there and put that product on the field.”
“We’ll see where we’re at, at the end of the week, as far as my familiarity with things and how quickly I can pick things up to be able to produce quickly, not just to come in and wait around,” Smith said. “I’m sure they want to plug and play.”
Ealy, 26, played his first three seasons with Carolina (with which he had 14 sacks) and then played in 15 games with the Jets last season (one sack and nine passes defensed). He signed with the Cowboys in April but was released before the season. To create a roster spot for Ealy, the Raiders waived linebacker James Cowser.
With personnel continuing to change, Rucker said improvement in the Raiders’ pass rush must come from “execution, finishing the plays.”
“It’s a combination of all things,” Rucker said. “We’ve got to be better on first and second down so they have long third downs. That’s something that we struggled with. We’re good at times but not good enough. We’ve been really inconsistent. And it starts with the leaders. We’ve got to do better and everything trickles down from there.”