HENDERSON, Nev.\u2014After a few days where the Las Vegas Raiders offense was able to make plays at will, the defense not only showed resistance on Sunday, but they were outright flying around the practice field at Intermountain Healthcare Performance Center.<\/p>\n
The Raiders defense was able to sustain pressure throughout the day, with the secondary being one of the more impressive groups of the morning. While getting into the backfield helped with defensive linemen JJ Pegues and Keyron Crawford making plays to lead to losses of yards, cornerbacks such as Decamerion Richardson and Jermod McCoy were able to record impressive pass breakups. The play of the day, however, came from second-year defensive back Greedy Vance, who read a pass from Fernando Mendoza for the first interception of training came from the first overall pick.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe read his keys the right way. He was in the right spot,\u201d diagnosed Raiders safeties coach Matt Robinson about Vance\u2019s play.<\/p>\n
\u201cThroughout camp, he\u2019s been doing a great job playing both nickel and safety and [I\u2019m] excited to see where he\u2019s at.\u201d<\/p>\n
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It was a day that a young secondary has been hungry for. While a few veterans remain, this year\u2019s Raiders featured four drafted rookies in the defensive backfield, as well as a slew of undrafted rookies hoping to prove themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a deep room and expect a lot of guys that are competing to play,\u201d said Robinson. \u201cIt\u2019s a challenge to work them in, but\u2026come game time in the preseason, let\u2019s see what they can do when the bullets are flying and the lights are on. Let\u2019s see who shows up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Equally as eager to make positive impressions is the special teams unit, consisting of longtime punter AJ Cole and a slew of new faces and coaches, the latter of which is lead by Joe DeCamillis. Although it is his first season with the Silver and Black, DeCamillis is ready to tackle his 35th NFL season with this group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way that we get it across to our players is we call it one down,\u201d explained DeCamillis about the attention to detail in his coaching. \u201cIn the kicking game, you only have one down to get it right. It\u2019s either fourth down, which obviously bad things can happen if you don\u2019t execute, and then on kickoff return, you only have one play. There\u2019s no second or third down to get it right, so we try to get that across to our guys as much as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
With Cole being the only player with tenure in Las Vegas, he has emerged as the de facto leader of the special teams group. Despite all of the moving parts around him, Cole has so far proven up for the challenge. He and new kicker Matt Gay do have a connection from their shared time together at the 2019 East-West Shrine Bowl, and was more than happy to report on the collaborative effort taking place between everyone to make life easier on all of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some ways, it\u2019s different on the personal level,\u201d said Cole about his new role.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past, when you have specialists who are around your age or even older than you, they\u2019re not necessarily asking for advice the same way. You\u2019re talking through things versus now that you have younger specialists. Me and Matt are the same year, but all the other specialists in the room career-wise and age-wise are younger than me. I think those questions are a little bit different and it\u2019s been a really fun experience to go through that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Along with his prior relationship with Cole, Gay worked with DeCamillis for two seasons (2021-22) with the Los Angeles Rams. Fittingly enough, those two seasons have been Gay\u2019s best at the NFL level, crossing the 90 percent field goal success rate in both years.<\/p>\n
So far, Gay has shown improved power and has hit the ball well when given the opportunity. Although he did miss a field goal in a situational drill during the team period, that was more on the offensive line setting them back with a pair of holds. Regardless, the veteran kicker has pushed to earn his opportunity with Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m hitting the ball really well right now,\u201d said Gay when asked to judge his performance in training camp so far.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really pleased with how I\u2019m hitting it right now. Getting back with Joe, we get each other pretty well, and I think we vibe off each other really well. He kind of knows what I need. My goals for training camp is to get back to feeling like my true self, get back to hitting the ball, get back to not thinking too much.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Matsuzawa has emerged as the X-factor in the special teams race. Despite his unorthodox journey to the NFL, the undrafted rookie has drawn rave reviews so far this training camp. Matsuzawa, who hit nearly 87 percent of his field goals in three seasons at the University of Hawaii, has continued to impress at the NFL level, pushing the veteran Gay.<\/p>\n
\u201cMatt is an amazing guy and I\u2019m so happy to work with him,\u201d said Matsuzawa about his fellow kicker. \u201cHe\u2019s a great mentor and I\u2019m so grateful to have a veteran kicker like him.\u201d<\/p>\n
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DeCamillis has been impressed with Matsuzawa, even to the point where the special teams coordinator floated the idea of him sticking with the Raiders through the NFL\u2019s International Pathway Program. Should the Raiders choose to go that route, Matsuzawa would continue to develop on their practice squad without counting against the 16-player maximum, assuming he does not beat Gay outright and takes the kicker job himself.<\/p>\n
With pads close to coming on and the practices only getting more physical, the Raiders\u2019 defense and special teams now have some momentum to build off of as preseason rapidly approaches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HENDERSON, Nev.\u2014After a few days where the Las Vegas Raiders offense was able to make plays at will,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":962449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2065],"tags":[20143,10369,3619,7,126853,7489,7041,59169,93359,1744,393,2455,2454,6434,88,6,10154,525,23839],"class_list":["post-962448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-las-vegas-raiders","tag-aj-cole","tag-decamerion-richardson","tag-fernando-mendoza","tag-football","tag-greedy-vance-jr","tag-jermod-mccoy","tag-jj-pegues","tag-kansei-matsuzawa","tag-keyron-crawford","tag-las-vegas","tag-las-vegas-raiders","tag-lasvegas","tag-lasvegasraiders","tag-matt-gay","tag-news","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-training-camp","tag-raiders","tag-tst-las-vegas"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117027459813808814","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962448","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=962448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/962449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=962448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=962448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=962448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}