Raiders optimistic as team prepares for 2015 season
ALAMEDA, Calif. — The coaching staff has been overhauled, the roster upgraded and the facilities modernized.
Now the Oakland Raiders get the chance to turn those improvements into a better record on the field.
Oakland’s veterans began reporting back to the team facility on Monday for the official start of the off-season program. Like all teams that changed coaches this off-season, the Raiders will get a two-week head start for new coach Jack Del Rio to start implementing his plans for improving a team that has gone 12 straight seasons without a winning record or playoff berth.
“I’m fired up,” quarterback Derek Carr said. “I think that we’ve done a great job. Our whole locker-room feels that way. Our whole lockerroom felt going into the off-season, free agency and the draft, that we’re close. We became a team at the end and once we started playing like a team, we saw what we could do and then we saw how many games we lost that were so close when we weren’t a team.”
Del Rio was hired in January to replace interim coach Tony Sparano, who was in charge for 12 games after the in-season firing of Dennis Allen. Del Rio has brought in an almost entirely new staff, including offensive co-ordinator Bill Musgrave and defensive co-ordinator Ken Norton Jr., and upgraded the team’s weight room and strength program.
The staff includes eight former NFL players with more than 100 years of playing experience. Those former players have brought new energy to the team, with offensive players excited to run Musgrave’s uptempo system and defenders looking forward to soaking up Norton’s contagious energy.
“You can sense it as a player that he’s excited and he is a competitor,” linebacker Khalil Mack said. “You almost can feel that intensity that you can feel on the defence when you’re out there and it’s fourth down and you have a guy out there like that. It can only help that you have a coach as well that has been there and played.”
Carrand Mack were two bright spots as rookies last season when the Raiders won just three games. Carr started all 16 games and showed signs he could stabilize the revolving door that has existed at quarterback in Oakland since Rich Gannon left more than a decade ago.
Mack was one of the top outside linebackers in the game as a rookie, dominating against the run and generating consistent pressure on quarterbacks. In less than a year, they have gone from unproven rookies to core players.