Raiders' Josh McDaniels explains what his gameplan was for Khalil Mack
The Las Vegas Raiders allowed their rookie quarterback, Aidan O'Connell, to be sacked seven times on Sunday against the Los Angeles Chargers, which is not an ideal way to start off your first-ever NFL game. To make matters worse, six of those sacks came to Khalil Mack, a former Raiders player.O'Connell was tasked with playing […]
The Las Vegas Raiders allowed their rookie quarterback, Aidan O'Connell, to be sacked seven times on Sunday against the Los Angeles Chargers, which is not an ideal way to start off your first-ever NFL game. To make matters worse, six of those sacks came to Khalil Mack, a former Raiders player.
O'Connell was tasked with playing in his first-ever NFL game after Jimmy Garoppolo was ruled out with a concussion on Saturday. Then, the offensive line nearly killed O'Connell in what felt like every play. A big reason why is because of the dominance Mak showed.
It felt like whatever the Raiders were doing to prevent Mack from doing just didn't work. He basically did whatever he wanted to do out there.
"He's a great player," head coach Josh McDaniels said. "There were a number of snaps where there were multiple people assigned to him and him only, and to be able to do some of the things that he did, I mean, give him credit."
"He has a great motor. We jammed him, chipped him, hit him in the ribs; we did everything we could try to do to disrupt him with another player, and then we had a tackle, obviously, assigned to him, as well. He had a great day."
Khalil Mack was traded from the Raiders to the Chicago Bears in 2018 because he wanted to get paid more on a better contract, but Jon Gruden and his regime decided not to do so. Since then, Mack has still been tearing up the league, as evidenced by his performance against the Raiders on Sunday. He ended with six sacks, a batted pass, and probably more quarterback pressures than the entire Raiders defensive line.
He was their pass rush.
The excuse McDaniels gave, though, is kind of silly, to say the least. Of course, McDaniels usually says he has to watch the tape first, which he did in this instance, but to say that you assigned several players to him and he just "had a great day" is kind of ignoring the fact that you didn't scheme it up the right way.
McDaniels didn't make adjustments; if he says that he did, they sure weren't noticeable. This is just another thing fans will add to the pile of things they hate him for.
Raiders receive bad news after loss to Chargers
The Las Vegas Raiders started Sunday morning with a clean slate in terms of injuries. They had no one on the injured list prior to the game. However, when the game ended, that changed, a lot. According to Josh McDaniels, the Raiders had seven players make the list. One of them was Anthony Averett, who […]
