Raiders week one snap counts vs Rams: Arden Key, Bruce Irvin split defensive snaps, generate little pressure

With the Raiders trading Khalil Mack last week, the question that hung over the Raiders was how they were going to replace his production. Namely how were they going to generate pass rush. We got our first peek at those plans Monday night and it was not inspiring.

Most figured this was Bruce Irvin’s time to step up and fill the void, both from a leadership standpoint and a production standpoint.

Irvin didn’t even play half the snaps on defense. He was often seen standing on the sideline, replaced by rookie Arden Key.

It was a bit odd, actually. Irvin had the Raiders only sack in the game on an otherwise nearly pass rush bereft defensive line that had a total of two QB hits in the game. Gruden blamed the Rams ability to run the ball for the lack of pass rush.

“When you can run the ball like they ran it in the second half it’s very hard to rush the passer,” said Gruden. “Obviously we didn’t get to Jared [Goff] enough and we didn’t dig early enough. We will take a look at the reasons why we didn’t.”

Hopefully Gruden takes a look at the tape from Sunday night to find his answer.

Arden Key was particularly disappointing considering the kind of skills he showed in training camp. He pointed to a combination of nerves and the Rams game plan as to why he was ineffective.

“Yeah, I was a little nervous at the beginning. I got confident throughout the game,” said Key. “What we saw on film was different than what they did. They run a ton of boots. They tried to slow our rush. Attackers got on us quick. There weren’t sets, when they gave sets we were slow because the jumped us a lot. They kicked back on us. The things they did on film weren’t what they did a ton today.”

To be fair, Tank Carradine was unexpectedly inactive with for undisclosed reasons. Also, to be fair, Carradine isn’t known for his pass rush. He’s more of a run stopper, which may have at least helped in stopping Todd Gurley from running all over the Raiders’ defense. Frostee Rucker saw 65% of the snaps as well and had 2 tackles.

Another interesting note is despite all the talk from Defensive Coordinator that the secondary would rotate, they really didn’t. Starters Gareon Conley, Leon Hall, Reggie Nelson, and Marcus Gilchrist played nearly every snap. Rashaan Melvin played 78% of the snaps with Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie getting in for 20 snaps (32%). Karl Joseph saw 7 snaps and offseason favorite Erik Harris didn’t see a snap on defense.