Upon accepting the Raiders general manager position earlier this offseason, Tom Telesco immediately increased the Raiders' depth at nearly every position.
This allowed the Raiders to spend the offseason evaluating the talent available and choose which group of players would give them the best chance to succeed this upcoming season. After an entire offseason and completing the preseason slate of games, the Raiders are just days away from having to trim down the roster.
The Raiders’ additional depth means Telesco and Coach Antonio Pierce will have difficult decisions ahead of them. When asked how he, as a defensive-minded head coach, viewed the team’s roster with cut-down day looming, Pierce responded, "Yeah, well, one, I'm not a defensive coach. I'm the head coach. My background is defense. I look at everything overall.
“To me, special teams are forefront for me, just to make sure that we're sound there. We got two kickers that can really change the game with Daniel [Carlson] and AJ [Cole]. But really the depth, it goes back to the question earlier, they asked about the depth of corner, just constantly improving that room.
“Between wide receivers and DB's, you constantly lose those guys throughout the season, and you want to have depth. You want to feel good about that. And I think just overall up front, when the game comes down like it did last night and teams are running the ball, and you want to stop the run in certain situations, a four-minute, or say we got the ball down the to the red-zone and you want to run it in, you want to finish those drives the right way.
Pierce said he and Telesco view things in a similar manner and that he looks forward to working the Telesco to figure out the team's roster. However, Coach Pierce insists the majority of the players currently on the roster still be there after cut-down day, one way or another.
“I know Tom [Telesco] sees it the same way," Pierce said. "But to act like we're going to sit there and flip this roster over the next 48 hours, that's not going to happen. A lot of the guys are going to be on our practice squad and that make our 50-man roster here. Like everybody in the league, there's going to be anywhere from five to eight players that know there's going to be change, and that's going to happen throughout the season, just constantly rotating that bottom part of the roster."
