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Raiders Head Coach Dennis Allen:** "All right I'll go through the injury report real quick – Tyvon Branch did not practice, Mike Brisiel was limited in practice, Juron Criner was limited in practice. Andre Holmes was limited in practice. Jason Hunter did not practice today. Kaluka [Maiava] was limited in practice. Matt McCants limited. Darren McFadden did not practice. Denarius Moore did not practice. Daniel Muir was limited and Terrelle Pryor was limited. So I'll go ahead and get to the question everybody is going to ask. Matt McGloin will be the starting quarterback this week. We'll monitor Terrelle to see how he's doing this week, what his health is, and find out what his status will be for the game this weekend. We had to go out and battle through some elements today, which I think that's always good to have to go out and do that, and guys have to keep their focus and get themselves ready and get ready to play a game on Sunday. So it was good that we went out and did that. I don't think we had the type of practice that I would have wanted to, but we have a chance to come back tomorrow and have a better practice. Obviously, this is a big game for our football team. We need to be able to come out and put back to back weeks together. I thought we had a good week of practice last week. I thought we played well. We need to be able to do the same this week in front of our home crowd. We understand that it's a tough challenge against this football team. I think they have explosive playmakers on the offensive side of the ball, both in the passing game and in the running game. This is a defense that plays very aggressive, a lot of man coverage, tough, physical defense. We'll have our work cut out for us."
Q: You come out now and say Matt is the quarterback – is that because Pryor isn't going to be healthy enough or is it just Matt one way or the other?
Coach Allen: "Really it's two-fold. No. 1, Matt McGloin earned the right to get another opportunity to start with the way that he performed last week. And then also just being able to get a chance to watch Terrelle this week in practice and kind of monitor where he is physically and hopefully he'll be healthy enough that he'll be up and active for the game, but we'll see how that plays out as the week goes on."
Q: How did Terrelle take your conversation on Monday? You said you were going to talk with him about what was happening.
Coach Allen: "I'm sure that he wants to be out there and he wants to be able to play, but I think he understands where we're at and the situation that we're in. I don't know, obviously, that he's 100 percent healthy. I don't know how many guys are at this point in time in the season, but he understands that he needs to get healthy so he has an opportunity to come out and help us."
Q: Would you use him as a backup for the game?
Coach Allen: "If he's healthy."
Q: Is he going to be ruled out for sure this game?
Coach Allen: "No."
Q: So you could possibly use him?
Coach Allen: "Like I said, I want to monitor how Terrelle does in practice this week to see where his health is. If he's healthy, then he'll be up and be the backup quarterback this game and we could potentially use him in this football game. If he's not, then he'll be down."
Q: Could you use him in the same way you envisioned during camp where he could be an accent?
Coach Allen: "It's a possibility."
Q: DJ Hayden IR'ed today. Last week you didn't seem to think the injury was that bad. You thought he'd be okay after awhile…
Coach Allen: "I don't know that I ever said that I thought he'd be okay, but he had a groin injury. He had, yesterday, the sports hernia surgery, so we had to put him on IR for the rest of the year."
Q: How would you characterize the way he played in the eight games that he was healthy enough to play?
Coach Allen: "Obviously, I would say he had his ups and downs. He had some times where I thought he played really well and sometimes where he looked like a rookie out there. But, I think for where he's at, for the things he's had to go through, I was pleased with his progress. Now, he's got to go through another rehab process and begin to start getting ready for next year. It'll be a great thing for him to have a full off-season where he can work out, get himself in shape, get bigger, get stronger and get ready for next year."
Q: What's Miles' [Burris] status? He's now on the roster. Will he play this week?
Coach Allen: "Miles is on the roster. I think there's a chance we could see him out there on Sunday. He'll be a guy that we have to try to work in. We wouldn't just throw him in there and have him play 60 plays in the game. He's a guy that obviously we felt he was healthy enough that he could help us, so I want to try to get an opportunity and hopefully we'll be able to get him in the game this week and see how he does."
Q: How extensive was his special teams play when he was a 15-game starter?
Coach Allen: "I wouldn't call it extensive. He did participate some in special teams. I would envision as we get him into the flow that he'll have a bigger role on special teams and then see how much we're able to get him into the game as a linebacker."
Q: Can Matt continue to earn starts if he plays well on Sunday?
Coach Allen: "Listen, this is a production business and I've said that before. One of the things we've tried to create here is an atmosphere of competition where if you go out and you perform and you make plays, you get opportunities to continue to go out and perform and make plays. He did that last week. He's going to get another opportunity this week and we'll see how it goes."
Q: How did Gregg Williams shape who you are as a coach working with him?
Coach Allen: "A lot. I got a lot of respect for Gregg as a football coach. He taught me a lot, not just schematically, but how to run a defense. Not just what you do call-wise, but how do you lead those guys, how do you motivate those guys, how do you get them to play hard and play the way you want them to play. When you go back and you look throughout his career at all defenses that he's been a part of, all of them have had a common characteristic and that's that they play really physical and they play really hard."
Q: As far as the blitz schemes go, did he also influence as far as your blitz schemes?
Coach Allen: "Yeah, we still do some of the things that we did there with him in New Orleans. Obviously, every year you kind of tweak some things and add some things, take some things out. JT [Jason Tarver] and some of the things that he's done in his past we've kind of combined systems a little bit. I think it's been pretty effective for us."
Q: Where's Jared Veldheer right now in terms of his comeback?
Coach Allen: "Really he's practicing this week. He got practice reps this week. I don't anticipate him being up and playing in the game this week. I'm really shooting for the Thanksgiving Day game to get him back."
Q: How about Denarius Moore? Is his injury possibly serious?
Coach Allen: "He couldn't practice today. He's really sore. Again, he'll be one of those guys that's going to be day-to-day and this is going to be something that he's going to have to deal with as we finish out this season. Whenever he can tolerate the pain and be able to push through it, then he'll be back and up. It's not a surgery thing or anything like that."
Q: Will the weather play any part in whether a guy practices or not?
Coach Allen: "No."
Q: It's really rainy and cold and say, "a guy's got a hamstring, maybe I wouldn't want to put him out there today," or no, you're either ready or you're not regardless of what it's like?
Coach Allen: "Yeah, you can either go or you can't go. Now, how much they practice, whether we use them in a limited role or let them take all their reps or not, that might be a factor. But I don't really put too much into if it's raining a certain guy's not going to practice."
Q: Is Darren getting closer?
Coach Allen: "He's getting better. He had a good workout today. I talked to Rod coming off the field and obviously he hadn't talked to Darren, but it looked like he had a pretty good workout over there on the side. We'll get a chance to visit with him and we'll see more of where he's at and see what his availability is for this week, but he's definitely getting closer."
Q: Different styles between him and Rashad [Jennings] – is that maybe a one-two punch there with the different styles they have? Coach Allen:"Listen, I have confidence in both those guys that they could go in and do the job for us, so I think we have good running backs and we'll use them accordingly."
