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Each week, the average number of points the Raiders allow goes up and each week the talk of making a coaching change on defense gets louder. In turn, Gruden defense of his defensive coordinator get louder as well.
To be fair, when Gruden says ominous things like he did after the Raiders gave up 45 points to the Buccaneers Sunday, he kinda leaves it open for interpretation.
“I’m not going to say it here today,” Gruden said in response to a question about what can be done about the lack of pass rush. “Obviously there’s some things we have to take a good look at. That process will start as soon as the press conference is over.”
The final numbers for the Raiders pass rush against Tom Brady and the Bucs were appalling. They had just three total pressures, with one QB hit, and no sacks. And no surprise Brady carved them up. And the media got to talking again about whether Paul Guenther’s job was still safe.
“There’s a lot of people talking about are we making changes, are we bringing in new coaches, new players,” said Gruden in his Monday press conference. “We are where we are. We’re 3-3, we played some really good offenses and just so you know Tom Brady is a problem for a lot of people. So is Drew Brees and certainly a lot of the guys that we’ve seen are very good players, but we’re going to stick together, bond together, make some changes in the lineup possibly and in the scheme that we use and we’re hoping to change the results that we’re getting.”
Lineup and scheme changes. Ok.
As for lineup changes, there isn’t a lot to work with. They had everyone on the defensive line healthy Sunday and Maurice Hurst was the only guy who even touched Brady in the game, which he did once. That’s clearly not going to get it done.
“We’re going to try to get the best four out there that we can, number one,” Gruden said of his plans to improve the pas rush. “Whether it involves more blitzing, we’ll see. Who goes inside, who goes outside, who’s on the left side, who’s on the right side, what stunts we call, what blitzes we call. Everything is on the table. We’ve been meeting since very early in the morning and we’re going to play better on defense, I’m determined to make sure we prove that this week.”
There are a couple lineup changes that could be made.
Hurst has outplayed Maliek Collins at 3-tech this season, so perhaps getting him more snaps would help. Just spitballing here.
The team also signed David Irving to the practice squad recently, only to have him inactive for the game. Perhaps if he’s up to speed, he can take some snaps away from some of the more ineffective Raiders defensive linemen like Arden Key.
Or perhaps Irving’s presence can help them find a way to best utilize Clelin Ferrell who has no sacks this season and has been inconsistent. He already saw a season-low 53% of the defensive snaps on Sunday, so clearly they are seeing fewer reasons to put him on the field.
Grasping at straws here.
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