{"id":71582,"date":"2025-05-23T00:57:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T00:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/71582\/"},"modified":"2025-05-23T00:57:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T00:57:12","slug":"top-takeaways-from-first-week-of-otas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/71582\/","title":{"rendered":"Top takeaways from first week of OTAs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n  Larry Hopkins from Pennsylvania asks:<\/p>\n<p>\n  &#8220;How is the defense looking so far?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Based off what I viewed Wednesday morning, pretty damn good Larry.<\/p>\n<p>Patrick Graham&#8217;s unit got after it, coming away with four turnovers in the team period portion of practice. Carroll was certainly pleased with their overall showing, pointing out the contributions of a few new free agent signings.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Jeremy Chinn has really shown a lot already in leadership,&#8221; Carroll said. &#8220;Elandon Roberts has already given us a real surge in the kind of confidence that you can spread to the rest of the players. E [Eric] Stokes has done a nice job too. He&#8217;s jumped right up at the corner spot. So, we&#8217;re getting a lot of really good, positive things from guys that have been there before and been on some good teams and done some good winning and all that, and they&#8217;re helping the other guys.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The defense in general, the coverage group, did a really nice job today,&#8221; he added. &#8220;We stepped a couple things up from Monday and it showed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Silver and Black also got <a class=\"nfl-o-cta--link nfl-o-cta--underline\" style=\"word-break: break-word\" href=\"https:\/\/www.raiders.com\/team\/players-roster\/maxx-crosby\/\" title=\"Maxx Crosby\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Maxx Crosby<\/a> back on the field after rehabbing from ankle surgery at the end of last season. The expectations are, in due time, they&#8217;ll pair <a class=\"nfl-o-cta--link nfl-o-cta--underline\" style=\"word-break: break-word\" href=\"https:\/\/www.raiders.com\/team\/players-roster\/christian-wilkins\/\" title=\"Christian Wilkins\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Christian Wilkins<\/a> and <a class=\"nfl-o-cta--link nfl-o-cta--underline\" style=\"word-break: break-word\" href=\"https:\/\/www.raiders.com\/team\/players-roster\/malcolm-koonce\/\" title=\"Malcolm Koonce\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Malcolm Koonce<\/a> alongside him once they&#8217;re back to full health as well.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s here early, working hard, but we&#8217;re still working it, and he&#8217;s not ready to get back out,&#8221; Carroll said of Wilkins&#8217; status. &#8220;And we&#8217;re in the midst of a long, challenging process here. So, fortunately there&#8217;s a lot of time, and we&#8217;re going to take every bit of it. We&#8217;ve really tried to be really diligent about the way we&#8217;ve worked it and the way we&#8217;ve monitored it and all of that, and he&#8217;s really been on board the whole time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Just recovering. Running around a little bit, starting to get back into football,&#8221; Koonce said. &#8220;So, it&#8217;s feeling great. &#8230; I want to get back to where I was last year. I don&#8217;t want to miss a step or lag behind.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Larry Hopkins from Pennsylvania asks: &#8220;How is the defense looking so far?&#8221; Based off what I viewed Wednesday&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2065],"tags":[7,268,269,1744,393,2455,2454,4661,6,525],"class_list":{"0":"post-71582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-las-vegas-raiders","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-home-centerpiece","10":"tag-home-latest-stories","11":"tag-las-vegas","12":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","13":"tag-lasvegas","14":"tag-lasvegasraiders","15":"tag-news-mailbag","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-raiders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114554434153558300","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}