The Raiders focus this week in practice, aside from getting ready for the season, is to prepare for meeting up with the cross bay rival 49ers. It will be the preseason home opener for these Raiders and after the Cowboy fans and Bears fans got to see a bit of what this team is capable of, the hometown fans will get their first taste. And that Cable is all geeked up about it.
“We’ve been on the road now, two weeks in a row now, two long trips, but now we get to come home and be in front of our crowd. We’re all tickled about it, excited that we’re playing the 49ers weekend and we’ll look forward to it.”
It is a shame the Raiders aren’t playing in Arizona in old Sun Devil Stadium next week because today’s practice would have been the perfect “warm up” for such game. Napa reached 103 degrees on Tuesday and the Raiders practice is held during the hottest part of the day.
Despite the triple digit temperature, there were no players to have to quit early because of the heat. And that is yet another thing that Cable was geeked up about.
“It was great. It was exactly 103. It was perfect. But we needed it. I talked about before, we had a chance to go to Dallas, it was like 104 when we got off the plane. We played in Chicago last week. We were hoping to have a lot of humidity, and we just didn’t get it. It was actually a pretty cool night… We just went to work, and that’s what’s cool about this group of guys. There was no complaining or moping around or anything like that. We just went right to work and, ‘Yeah, it’s hot. So what. Give me something cold to drink and we’ll keep moving.’ I like that about our team.”
So he is “tickled” about the 49er game and he is “excited” and thinks it “great” to be preparing to face the Titans. Gotta love it.
Fallback position
The Alex Daniels fullback experiment is over. He came out to practice today sporting the #71 and will be practicing back at the position at which he excelled at University of Cincinnati– defensive end. I understood why Cable moved him to fullback early in camp with the injuries to Marcel Reece, Luke Lawton and Manase Tonga. However, I never understood why he attempted to make the transition permanent. Daniels looked great at defensive end in mini camps prior to the switch. He is very quick off the edge and I noted that he beat rookie Jared Veldheer at least a couple times.
No doubt his poor play in Saturday’s game in Chicago prompted Cable to end the fullback experiment. He was used as the starting goal line fullback and looked completely lost.
“I just didn’t feel like we made the improvement as quickly as I’d hoped,” Cable said of Daniels. “He was brought in here, started out on defense to be a pass rusher, and obviously, it’s good to get a set of legs back over there. It just didn’t feel like to me it was working.”
The disappointing part for Daniels is now he has almost no chance of making this team. He has lost way too many reps at defensive end to compete. His best chance is if Cable likes his potential enough to put him on the practice squad. That seems like a high likelihood.
Another player that has missed a lot of reps is Colt Brennan. But Brennan missed those reps because he was signed in the middle of camp. With Kyle Boller playing so well, and Brennan still learning the playbook, he has seen extremely limited time. He will see almost no time in the 49er game because the starters will play into the 3rd quarter and Bruce Gradkowski is healthy. Even Kyle Boller will only see about half the 4th quarter. The good news is that Brennan is eligible for the practice squad as he has never been active for a regular season NFL game. If he isn’t swiped up off waivers and is willing to join the practice squad, it would be a great thing for the Raider to have a player with his potential in the wings. And if JC, Grad, or Boller get hurt during the season, they can sign him to the active roster.
Injury updates
Chaz Schilens has arthroscopic knee surgery today. Cable doesn’t know yet what the timetable for his return is but it is expected be 2-4 weeks.
Samson Satele is out with the ankle injury he sustained in the Bears game. We don’t know how serious it is yet but he won’t be playing in Saturday’s game against the 49ers. Chris Morris will likely start in his place with Jared Veldheer coming in at some point later in the game.
Chris Johnson(sore hamstring) and Richard Seymour(tricep) are still out with injury. Langston Walker came late and left early with tightening in his lower back. Alex Daniels left early as well with a sore groin.
Darrius Heyward-Bey was back at practice and looked like he had benefited from the week of rest. He was running some nice deep routes and looking back to the form he started to show prior to his bout with “fatigue.” Of course when he is going against players who haven’t had the luxury of taking a week off, he should be playing with more energy. But it was good to see him back on the field looking like he might make some good plays. We will find out on Saturday. I am sure he is “tickled” to get back in the starting lineup.
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