Chiefs Week...Show the hate brothers!!!

It just feels good to have talent on the team :koolaid: top to bottom from the players to the coaches and even the scouts. We have about 6 scouts each being known draft analyst just like Mayock. Most Notable scout would be a tie between Nolan Nawrocki and DuJuan Daniels. 7 undrafted guys made the team correct? Can't say i'm shocked we have a team full of great scouts. Lets talk about the coaches my favorite hmm a tie between Buckner and Guenther. Last year I had my doubts about Guenther but this year he is proving me wrong. We still need to add a few more pieces on defense for him but I like what I see so far. :sunny:
 
Josh Mauro brings a physical, versatile presence to the Raiders defensive line
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By David Lombardi Sep 11, 2019
Josh Mauro’s first play as a Raider was reminiscent of the favorite play he’s made over his five-plus year NFL career.

For that, go back to 2015, Mauro’s second year in the league. The defensive lineman was with Arizona back then. That December, the Cardinals played the Minnesota Vikings on “Sunday Night Football,” and running back Adrian Peterson tried to turn the corner on a reverse.

Mauro would have none of it. He sniffed the play out, corralled the surefire future Hall of Famer and forced a fumble. Arizona won a close game in its ultimately successful pursuit of a first-round playoff bye, finished the regular season 13-3 and didn’t bow out until the NFC Championship Game.

“Maybe I got lucky,” Mauro said with smile last week, recalling forcing Peterson’s fumble. “Maybe I took the right steps.”

Or maybe, after seeing what Mauro did on this season’s first defensive snap for the Raiders on Monday night against Denver, this guy just has a knack for sniffing out action in the backfield.



The Broncos tried to catch the Raiders off guard with an unusual jet sweep to tight end Noah Fant. But Mauro wasn’t fooled; he noticed that the Broncos’ other tight end and right tackle immediately headed in different directions. Armed with lessons learned during film study, Mauro reacted instinctively.

Mauro didn’t get drawn into the interior, which would’ve opened the outside for Fant. He fired straight forward, instead, yanking and tossing Fant to the turf five yards behind the line of scrimmage.

The Raiders were excellent defensively the rest of the game, a 24-16 win. Mauro’s play set a precise, violent tone on that side of the ball.

“Those jet sweeps, if you remember last year, the Rams really hurt us with the jet sweeps and it’s a common play now in the NFL,” Jon Gruden said of Mauro’s play. “Everybody is running these jet sweeps. Sometimes they fake it to him, sometimes they give it to him, and Mauro is an experienced guy and he read it and made a heck of a play.”

The Raiders, of course, were hurt by more than just jet sweeps last year. They allowed a league-worst 29.2 points per game. That usually happens when a team struggles against both the run and the pass, and the Raiders defensive line checked both of those dubious boxes. They allowed 4.7 yards per carry and logged an NFL-low 13 sacks. (The league’s next-worst pass rushing team managed 30 sacks.)

That’s why the Raiders signed Mauro this offseason and why they re-signed him quickly after they initially cut him amid a 53-man roster shuffle. To shore up the defensive front, the team needed savvy, versatile pieces in the position group, and the 28-year-old Mauro was a good fit because of the wealth of relevant football knowledge he’d accumulated.

Mauro, who played for the New York Giants last season, was with the Cardinals from 2014-17. Current Raiders defensive line coach Brentson Buckner was Mauro’s position coach for all of those seasons in Arizona. Prior to that, Mauro played college ball at Stanford, where he was part of a defensive line that paved the way for two Rose Bowl appearances and led the nation in sacks from 2011-14.

Every stop along the way has offered its unique lessons. And those first two — playing under respected former defensive line coach Randy Hart at Stanford and then Buckner in Arizona — are the ones that are coming full circle for Mauro now.

“Randy Hart, him and Coach Buckner had a lot of similarities,” Mauro said. “If you can play one place on the defensive line, you can play everywhere in the defensive line. If you can play with the right technique, you attack the right way. At Stanford, we had a lot of guys who can play multiple positions, do multiple things, so it’s been easy for us to translate to the NFL now.”

Though Mauro is technically a run specialist — he lines up at the strong-side defensive end position in base packages — he must do more than that, since the NFL demands versatility from all its linemen. One-trick ponies are quickly exposed since teams will run out of passing formations and pass out of running formations.

For example, Mauro played 27 snaps against the Broncos, but nearly half of those became pass-rushing opportunities. Mauro also sniffed one such play out, recognizing Denver quarterback Joe Flacco’s bootleg off of play-action. He sprinted in space and used his 6-foot-6 frame to deflect a pass in the open field.



It was a play that put Mauro’s length and underrated athleticism to use.

When Jim Harbaugh’s Stanford staff recruited him in 2009, Mauro weighed only about 230 pounds (he’s at 290 pounds now). He had come up through the youth football ranks as a linebacker, so operating in space was a requirement.

“My role model was Ray Lewis,” Mauro said. “I liked that he was a leader, a monster on the field, never missed a stop. I emulated him. But once I got into college, J.J. Watt was booming at that time. You watch other guys and try to get comparable body types, comparable skill sets, and just see what they’re successful with and try to replicate that.”

Use Watt as a model: That’s precisely what Stanford did with the likes of Mauro, Henry Anderson and Trent Murphy during that era. All three came into college as slimmer, lightly recruited prospects, but they developed into hulking linemen that anchored one of the nation’s best defensive fronts and made it to the NFL.

The entire trio remains in the league today; Anderson plays for the New York Jets and Murphy plays for the Buffalo Bills.

“We played a 3-4, but it was a get-off defense,” Mauro said of his Stanford time, comparing it the Raiders’ 4-3 philosophy this season. “So it was never sit back and read. We’ve always been attacking since college. Coach Buckner is the same way, we get off the ball and we’re one-gap. We’re just trying to penetrate and be aggressive. There are a lot of similarities between how we played in school and how we play now.”

That’s why Mauro has been a good fit for the Raiders so far. He’s familiar with his position coach. He’s familiar with the style that the team is trying to implement to improve its fortunes up front.

And, just as importantly, the Raiders are familiar with Mauro.

“Josh is going to bring an attitude,” Buckner said during training camp. “A lot of times, people want to talk about sacks. But if you look at the correlation between stopping the run and sack leaders, there is a great correlation because that gets you in passing situations.

“He can help (Clelin Ferrell) and Maxx (Crosby) and those young ends understand that — ‘yeah you’re athletic, but this is what football is all about, punching that guy in the mouth.’ … Josh gives us a physical presence. You can’t just line up and run at our pass rushers all day and get them tired. I have a guy here than can negate that, and then I bring my faster guys in and they’re still fresh. So he makes everyone’s job better.”
 
Notes
• The Raiders placed rookie safety Johnathan Abram, who suffered and played through a torn rotator cuff and labrum on Monday, on injured reserve on Wednesday. Abram will undergo surgery on Thursday and is done for the 2019 season.

“We’ll consider this a redshirt year for him,” Gruden said Wednesday of Abram, who’ll remain around the team facility to rehab and study film this year. “But he made some big plays to help us win a football game and he’s a big part of our future.”

How will Abram’s absence affect the Raiders’ safety rotation this year?

“Everybody has a role and right now at the safety position everybody’s role has changed a little bit,” Gruden said. “Fortunately, we have some veterans there. Erik Harris, Karl Joseph, (Curtis) Riley started 16 games for the Giants and played well for us, so we’ll go with those guys and perhaps (Dallin) Leavitt will get his shot.”

• Cornerback Gareon Conley, who was carted off the field Monday after Abram inadvertently kneed him in the head, was back at practice Wednesday in a limited capacity.

“Really happy to have him back on the practice field today,” Gruden said of Conley. “He did just about everything and that’s really great news for us.”

• Sunday’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs at the Coliseum will likely be the last contest in NFL history played on a surface that features infield dirt from a baseball configuration. That’s because the Raiders, who “host” the Bears in London Oct. 6, won’t play another game at the Coliseum until Nov. 3. Even if the A’s go the distance this season, that’s after the World Series ends.

Chiefs coach Andy Reid brought up the infield dirt on a Wednesday conference call with Raiders reporters.

“There’s just something about that place that’s crazy,” Reid said of the Coliseum. “Last year, the sewage system flooded, and it simplifies the game for you. You got to work through a few things to get out there, and then you still have the baseball infield. These guys can tell their grandkids that they used to play baseball there and we’d go out and during the baseball season and play in the dirt, literally. I think there’s something to that.”

Speaking of family stories and that Coliseum infield dirt, Sunday’s game will likely be the last time star Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes plays on the same dirt in a professional venue as his father, former MLB pitcher Pat Mahomes, who had nine career appearances against the A’s at the Coliseum during his baseball career.

It’s the final remaining multipurpose football-baseball stadium in American pro sports, and the Coliseum is also the only place to have seen two generations of Mahomes athletes play — both against Oakland teams.
 
RF34 said:
Notes
• The Raiders placed rookie safety Johnathan Abram, who suffered and played through a torn rotator cuff and labrum on Monday, on injured reserve on Wednesday. Abram will undergo surgery on Thursday and is done for the 2019 season.

“We’ll consider this a redshirt year for him,” Gruden said Wednesday of Abram, who’ll remain around the team facility to rehab and study film this year. “But he made some big plays to help us win a football game and he’s a big part of our future.”

How will Abram’s absence affect the Raiders’ safety rotation this year?

“Everybody has a role and right now at the safety position everybody’s role has changed a little bit,” Gruden said. “Fortunately, we have some veterans there. Erik Harris, Karl Joseph, (Curtis) Riley started 16 games for the Giants and played well for us, so we’ll go with those guys and perhaps (Dallin) Leavitt will get his shot.”

• Cornerback Gareon Conley, who was carted off the field Monday after Abram inadvertently kneed him in the head, was back at practice Wednesday in a limited capacity.

“Really happy to have him back on the practice field today,” Gruden said of Conley. “He did just about everything and that’s really great news for us.”

• Sunday’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs at the Coliseum will likely be the last contest in NFL history played on a surface that features infield dirt from a baseball configuration. That’s because the Raiders, who “host” the Bears in London Oct. 6, won’t play another game at the Coliseum until Nov. 3. Even if the A’s go the distance this season, that’s after the World Series ends.

Chiefs coach Andy Reid brought up the infield dirt on a Wednesday conference call with Raiders reporters.

“There’s just something about that place that’s crazy,” Reid said of the Coliseum. “Last year, the sewage system flooded, and it simplifies the game for you. You got to work through a few things to get out there, and then you still have the baseball infield. These guys can tell their grandkids that they used to play baseball there and we’d go out and during the baseball season and play in the dirt, literally. I think there’s something to that.”

Speaking of family stories and that Coliseum infield dirt, Sunday’s game will likely be the last time star Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes plays on the same dirt in a professional venue as his father, former MLB pitcher Pat Mahomes, who had nine career appearances against the A’s at the Coliseum during his baseball career.

It’s the final remaining multipurpose football-baseball stadium in American pro sports, and the Coliseum is also the only place to have seen two generations of Mahomes athletes play — both against Oakland teams.
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I hope you guys beat KC.
 
If we win it'll probably be a barn burner. Going to need Carr playing lights out again and another big game from Jacobs. It'd be fucking fun to upset a team expected to be top 2 in the AFC after the shit we put up with in the last month.
 
really sucks losing Jacobs as he was making some critical stops like that pass in the flats to Fant. Nailed him and stopped his progress then next play we shut down the run, then they didn't convert the third down pass. KC is deadly on those types of plays. KC's offense is going to get theirs, we'll need some turnovers and our offense is going to have to play lights out. Hope the refs don't fuck us on bs penalties-- that could easily be the difference. Some very suspect calls kept Denver in the game too.
 
DonkeyKilla said:
really sucks losing Jacobs as he was making some critical stops like that pass in the flats to Fant. Nailed him and stopped his progress then next play we shut down the run, then they didn't convert the third down pass. KC is deadly on those types of plays. KC's offense is going to get theirs, we'll need some turnovers and our offense is going to have to play lights out. Hope the refs don't fuck us on bs penalties-- that could easily be the difference. Some very suspect calls kept Denver in the game too.
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Carr going to have to play lights out again and we will need to make the best of our scoring opportunities. FG’s aren’t going to cut it.

Hell a rookie QB drove the ball pretty well against them so we should move the ball well. I really worry about covering Kelce and then Shady getting those swing passes. Have to obviously eliminate the big play. Can’t have Watkins going off like he did last week.
 
DonkeyKilla said:
really sucks losing Jacobs as he was making some critical stops like that pass in the flats to Fant. Nailed him and stopped his progress then next play we shut down the run, then they didn't convert the third down pass. KC is deadly on those types of plays. KC's offense is going to get theirs, we'll need some turnovers and our offense is going to have to play lights out. Hope the refs don't fuck us on bs penalties-- that could easily be the difference. Some very suspect calls kept Denver in the game too.
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:wtf1:
 
Madturk said:
Sounds like Conley might play after all.
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I didn't think Conley was having a great game on Monday night before the injury. He's obviously needed but needs to play better. And if Conley doesn't play against the Chiefs, Mullen is going to have a bulls eye on his back.
 
godeep811 said:
I didn't think Conley was having a great game on Monday night before the injury. He's obviously needed but needs to play better. And if Conley doesn't play against the Chiefs, Mullen is going to have a bulls eye on his back.
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Sutton was eating his lunch.

But Conley is probably our best DB by a mile.
 
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