Head Coach Jack Del Rio & Quarterback Derek Carr
Take a look at what Oakland Raiders Head Coach Jack Del Rio and quarterback Derek Carr had to say postgame.
Head Coach Jack Del Rio
DEL RIO:We had a rough day, couldn't get them slowed down enough and couldn't get ourselves going, couldn't score enough ourselves. So tough loss, but no injuries to report. Questions?DEL RIO:I think you said something about running the ball early? I thought we were able to run the ball early. We got 15 attempts in the first half. Running it was a part of moving it, and if it wasn't for that turnover right before the half, I think we were competitive, we're in the game. So that was a major turn of events right there to not get that and then let them run it out of the end zone when they hadn't had much going on. They popped one for about 20. So, allowed them to get a field goal, a long field goal up, which with this altitude you can make and he nailed it. So that was a 10-point swing right there. That was a tough one to swallow.
But I thought we did well early. I would like to have ended up with 30-plus rush attempts in the ball game, but you got to stay within reasonable amount of the score in order to stick with the run.DEL RIO:You're talking about the time that we played or --DEL RIO:No, I really don't. I don't think that was a factor.DEL RIO:Did we feel like the home team tonight? I think that the crowd down here is pretty excited for the Raiders, so we appreciate that. But when you travel four and a half hours, four hours, you're not at home. So we appreciate the hospitality, a lot of good people came out and supported us and it's a great atmosphere, but it's hard to call it a home game, really.DEL RIO:Tom's a great player. He's played great for a long time in this league, and we just couldn't do enough to slow him down today.
DEL RIO: To me, I don't give any credence to those kind of questions. I mean, no offense, but I -- to me it's a, we're professionals and to me, so long as you have hope, you keep your hope, you keep hope alive. So, we'll continue to scratch and claw and fight for everything we can.
DEL RIO: Well, the biggest thing you have to do when you're playing a prolific offense, which they obviously are, is you have to be able to get off on third down. So, in the first half I believe we allowed five out of six on the stat sheet, but there were two other conversions allowed by penalty. So, at the end of the day you're allowing them to complete or convert seven out of eight on third down, and that's not going to get it done. To get them into third down, you got to be able to get off the field. And they're good at possessing it, that's what they do. They did a nice job of it and we didn't do a good enough job. But to me that's the biggest thing, between that and generating turnovers. And we're having a hard time generating turnovers. That's the biggest area.
DEL RIO: Yeah, a little bit. We need more production. We're willing to try just about anything and we talked about being lean there and needing more production from that spot. And he's a talented kid and it was probably asking a little too much, but we are going to roll those guys, we rolled our guys in the secondary tonight, and we're going to do that. We have got to do that until somebody starts playing well enough to stay in their full-time. We're not playing really well on the back end and we have to find a way. And we're going to make it competitive and let guys challenge for it and challenge for time and the guys that play the best are going to play the most.
DEL RIO: He just got -- he had his eyes in the back field and let the guy run by him.
DEL RIO: Well, there are would have, could have, should haves that keep coaches up at night. So, yeah, it's a different ball game if a lot of things happen differently, but you can't play that game. I mean you get a chance, you get an opportunity, that chapter's written now.
So, certainly catching the ball, we had three drops early, hanging onto the ball near the goal line there, getting off on the third down, those are all areas where you have an opportunity. And what happens is the team that executes the best is going to go home happy. They executed way better than we did tonight.
DEL RIO: I heard that. I think Will mentioned that before I came up. They have done a nice job for us the last couple of years. If this was a road game I would enjoy it. We just stop making them our home games, we'll be fine. All right. Appreciate it.
Quarterback Derek Carr
CARR:Yeah. That's something that we talk about all the time. In Miami we did a good job of going down and scoring before the half. We talked about how important that was. So any time you turn the ball over and then they can get the ball right before the half and go score, then get the ball back again in the second half, it's a good thing for that team.
CARR:Yeah. I got to throw the ball better, the drops -- it's got to be something to do with me, I got to throw it better, I got to put it on them, better timing, it's on me. It's on me to get that fixed and I'm going to work to do that.CARR:Yeah. They do a great job of -- they don't do anything special, they just do everything right. You sit there and in the first half they don't have any turnovers, they don't -- I don't think they had a penalty. And they do the little things right and it starts in the off-season. It starts how their culture in their building and all those kind of things. It's something that we're building, it's something that we're striving for, that efficiency and those kind of things. But, obviously, we have a long way to go.CARR:Yeah. The thing -- hard thing for us is we actually felt like we moved the ball well as a unit. We just didn't score. Whether it was a turnover, we had the matchup long to Johnny that we wanted and then things happened. There's little things in there that we felt like we were seeing it right, we had a good plan moving the ball, those kind of things, but then especially the first half, that one killed us. Going down there and then we're not trying to do wrong, we turned it over.CARR:Very impressive. He's a walking Hall of Famer, everyone knows that. He's definitely one of the best to ever play the game.**
CARR: I learned a lot from him when I was in college, just watching him prepare and those kind of things. But when you become competitors, and you learn about the game, you more want to beat them than take things that he's doing and try and emulate it. But he definitely does a lot of things that you want to emulate, for any quarterback, and he deserves all the credit and everything that he's going to get. First ballot Hall of Famer, fantastic player. But when you're playing him, you just want to beat him. CARR: For us, even if that wasn't the case, there's no doubt in my mind, I stood in that huddle down 30 with my guys, everyone hurting, everyone mad. And we looked at each other during one of those timeouts and nothing changes for us. We are who we are, we're not going to turn on each other, we're not going to turn on anything about what we do. Obviously, we know that our culture and everything that we do works, because we have seen it work. So there's little things that coach is going to hit on and we'll let him do that. But I mean me hitting on them and those kind of things, that will never happen, as long as I'm here. CARR: You know what, traveling down here, I think it was like four hours or something like that, and getting here, I think that hospitality was great, but it really wasn't, it wasn't the coliseum. That feel. Now, we loved playing here, we loved coming down here and playing, but it felt more neutral. CARR: We definitely know how to travel, we definitely know how to do that part of it. I don't think guys felt out of shape or anything like that or, you know, when you eat, staying on your schedule of eating, when you're in a different time zone and all those things, I don't think that that hurt us. I think that we do that really well. **
CARR: Oh, yeah, it's awesome. I definitely love it. I think it's great for the NFL and I think it's great for the fans.
CARR: Yeah. We definitely ran the ball well, definitely efficiently. I don't know how it ended up statistically and those kind of things, but when it was a game, we were able to run it efficiently and we had a great plan, great plan for these guys, and in both the pass and run game. But like you said, when you're down, you just got to go to throwing it.
