The day many players have been waiting for is upon us – first day in pads. It’s where all the talk goes out the window and the rubber hits the road.
Up to this point, it’s been hard to get a true feel of how the team will look. I mean, it’s one thing to beat a guy when he can’t block you or can’t hit you. Putting on pads changes all that.
“That’s the game,” offensive coordinator Luke Getsy said. “Now we’re starting to play the game and there’s not this kind of ‘hold up a little bit’ because you’re trying to protect your teammates, you get to go play. The speed of it all happens. It speeds up and everything happens faster and you got to make decisions. And when there’s pressures you got to make adjustments or get the ball out of your hand and at the same time we got to protect it and all that good stuff. Those are the opportunities you’re looking for and we got a great defense to go up against every single day that’s really gonna give us a great evaluation.”
Obviously the primary area Getsy is referring to here involves the quarterback. Not only is that the most important position on the field, but it’s the biggest competition the Raiders have right now.
Aidan O’Connell and Gardner Minshew are battling to be the starter. The two players have very different styles of play. O’Connell is more of a big armed pocket passer while Minshew is more mobile and better at improvising.
Apart from the QB battle happening, pads going on is exciting for everyone on both sides of the ball. First and foremost, it means players can better work on their craft.
“There’s things that I want to work on a lot that I only get to work on when we have full pads on,” said tight end Michael Mayer. “So, now it’s kind of like ‘ok, let’s lay it all out here. What do I need to get better at, now let’s really dig in and get better. We all got full pads on, nobody’s stopping me from doing anything.”
For players like Mayer, who will spend a good portion of his time blocking, having pads brings a crucial element to the game that he simply can’t work on prior to Tuesday.
“When you got shoulder pads on, you get your hands inside, you can grab, you can kind of leverage yourself and things like that. So, I’m really excited to get pads on and see offense vs defense, let’s go. I think they’re going to throw the ball out there and let us play.”
Up to this point the defense has dominated the offense. Which apparently has a lot of the players on offense talking a bit. Which seems kind of ironic considering it’s usually the defense that is the most excited for the hitting to begin. That hasn’t changed.
“It’s exciting,” said CB Jakorian Bennett. “The offense they talk a lot of talk ‘just wait until we put on pads’, but I feel like it’s going to make it better for us. We get to put our hands on them. So, yeah, yeah, it’s going to be fun. Y’all gonna see.”
We look forward to seeing how this plays out. The offense has a lot to prove, which is likely why they’re talking right now. They will be the ones with the bigger chip on their shoulders Tuesday. No doubt it will make for some fun competition. Which will only make everyone better.