Raiders interim coach Rich Bisaccia: ‘We can’t wait to get to game day’

Interim Las Vegas Raiders head coach Rich Bisaccia is becoming a darling of the fan base after leading the team to two big wins since taking over after stunning departure of coach Jon Gruden.

Bisaccia’s high energy and blunt honesty has charmed fans and, of course, the winning isn’t hurting his popularity, either.

Below are some highlights from Bisaccia’s media session following Sunday’s complete 33-22 home win over the Philadelphia Eagles:

On the leadership of quarterback Derek Carr:

“Football-wise, on the field, he is tremendous. He has an incredible understanding of what we are trying to do on offense. We can all see that the relationship that he and Greg Olson have running this offense. It’s really coming into fruition. We hope that continues, but I think they both need credit when it comes to that. Off the field, Derek is the voice of the Raiders right now. Players always want to listen to him. They always go to him. They ask him all types of things. I’m developing a relationship with him as we are going on our fourth year together. We can have conversations about a lot of things. He is a tremendous leader both on and off the field. Football is really important to him, you can see it by the way that he plays.”

On dealing with injuries:

“I think that our team responded to the challenge of not having Darren. Certainly Foster [Moreau] stepped up played really well as we all seen and looked at the stats. We dressed [Matt] Bushman today to give us a chance to have a backup if we had to use one. I think he played on kickoff return so he helped us there. We got to take Foster off of that. We had Marquel Lee up so we can take Foster off of punt return as well so that he could concentrate on mostly on offense. We still played him on punt. We had a big play coming off the end zone with the punt.”

Photo by Sam Morris/Getty Images

On the impact of the defense:

“We’re preaching turnovers and so we end up plus one. We got the two balls knocked out, the two fumbles, we had the good punt return which gave us good field position. Again, I can’t say enough about Greg and what they’re doing on offense. His direction, his leadership have gone hand and hand with what Derek’s doing. Obviously, collectively they’ve been together, and I think they’re doing a good job of coming up with a vision of what each game should look like, and I think Greg spearheaded that as well.”

On being the head coach in front of home fans at Allegiant Stadium for the first time:

“It’s always exciting to play at home. We all want to play at home and this is an unbelievable venue to play at, but on a personal level for me, we can’t wait to get to game day. We can’t wait to get on the grass and put all the work that they’ve gone through during the course of the week, see if we can put that to fruition on game day. For us, that’s the best part is actually getting to the game day. It was exciting certainly to come home and get a win.”