What about the defensive front?<\/p>\n
Maxx Crosby, in the three OTAs media watched, stretched with the team but did not practice as he continued his rehab from offseason knee surgery. And yet\u2026<\/p>\n
There is excitement in how he fits in the Raiders’ new 3-4 base scheme and how much freedom he might have in it given that his old position coach is his new defensive coordinator in Rob Leonard.<\/p>\n
Still, free-agent edge rusher Kwity Paye has been a quick study and bookend Malcolm Koonce has been a quicker-than-quick study, given his relationship and experience with Leonard, and rookie third-rounder Keyron Crawford, well, let’s just say he flashed at times in 30% of OTAs.<\/p>\n
The Raiders seemingly chose to address the secondary rather than the interior of the D-line in the draft – taking Arizona safeties Treydan Stukes and Dalton Johnson in the second and fifth rounds, respectively, and cornerbacks Jermod McCoy and Hezekiah Masses in the fourth and fifth rounds – but did select DT Brandon Cleveland in the seventh.<\/p>\n
The Raiders may not have that prototypical massive nose tackle to clog up the middle in a 3-4 – free-agent signee Benito Jones comes close – but they obviously like what they have in the likes of Adam Butler, Thomas Booker IV, Tonka Hemingway, Jonah Laulu, JJ Pegues and maybe even Laki Tasi, the 6-foot-6, 373-pound project from the NFL’s International Program to stay competitive in a fluid rotation.<\/p>\n
Games are won and lost in the trenches and, beyond the quarterback, what happens on the lines during mandatory minicamp will set the tone for the rest of the offseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What about the defensive front? Maxx Crosby, in the three OTAs media watched, stretched with the team but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":914062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2065],"tags":[7,268,269,1744,393,2455,2454,6,525],"class_list":["post-914061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-las-vegas-raiders","tag-football","tag-home-centerpiece","tag-home-latest-stories","tag-las-vegas","tag-las-vegas-raiders","tag-lasvegas","tag-lasvegasraiders","tag-nfl","tag-raiders"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116719076245713210","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914061","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=914061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}