Raiders outlook 2022: Josh McDaniels sees young secondary as an opportunity

Getting big production from the secondary, in which the team had committed major draft-pick investments in recent years, was a big priority for the previous regime of the Las Vegas Raiders.

Now that Dave Ziegler and Josh McDaniels have taken over the franchise, getting production out of the unit is paramount as well. The Raiders added several young veteran cornerbacks this offseason and veteran Duron Harmon. They also boast safety Tre’von Moehrig and nickel cornerback Nate Hobbs, who both were standouts as rookies, and other young players such as cornerback Trayvon Mullen and safety Johnathan Abram.

The team is still very young at cornerback. But McDaniels is excited about the possibilities. He believes team’s young players all have a chance to prove they can be a big part of the solution at safety and cornerback.

“Players that are young usually have their best football in front of them. There’s no doubt about that,” McDaniels said recently. “They develop, they have an opportunity to grow, they’re all eager, they’re all competing to try to earn opportunities. And I think that’s a really good thing. We have some different skill sets. We have some guys with maybe a little bit more speed or more size, so it gives us some flexibility. But I think that all of them are really eager to try to learn and they’re learning how to communicate and talk with each other, which is important. We did some third down stuff today, which is always a difficult down for defensive backs to deal with. We had some packages where there were six or seven of them on the field at the same time. Overall communication, understanding how to play the techniques that we’re trying to teach and coach. But love the group, love the way they work and eager to watch them continue to develop and grow and then go into training camp and let them just battle it out and compete. However it turns out, they’ll be the ones who determine that.”