Saturday the Raiders switched things up. And turned it up. Instead of the usual 10am practice, they moved practice to primetime. And with it, they went live. From start to finish, it was either live football or ‘thud’, which is hit and let up. And after warmups and individual drills, the rest of practice was all team sessions.
This allowed for the best look at how the Raiders offense and defense was looking so far. And with no joint practices scheduled, it will be one of the few chances the first teamers get to put in work that resembles actual game play.
In turn, it gave coaches and those of us in attendance a good long look at them.
With that in mind, we plucked out some of those who made a strong impression.