McDaniels: Game Time Shows What Practice is All About

Sometimes, it’s hard to see what all the practice is for until it’s implemented in the game.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame Game was the first time to see practice drills under Las Vegas Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels in action. A lot of the scenarios the players practiced showed up in the preseason game.

“We think there’s a lot of positives relative to our overall effort, the way we competed,” McDaniels said. “I thought the guys played hard from the very first play to the last play. And there was a lot of things that I thought showed up in the film that you do in smaller groups and smaller pods in practice and training camp – the one-on-one drills.”

McDaniels continued on to say that a good chunk of the game is the small drills but multiplied over and over.

“I mean, when you watch the game over – there’s a lot of plays where there are four one-on-one pass rush drills going on at the same time, you know?” McDaniels continued. “And so when you go back to practice, you say, hey, when we go to that one-on-one drill, I mean, it showed up 29 times last night. All those little things that you do in practice in smaller groups, they all showed up.”

Rewatching film after a game is also integral into continuing to improve the player and team as a whole.

McDaniels believes watching film will help how to improve themselves during practice.

“I think that the players, when we get the chance to watch and coach the film, it won’t be hard to see where practice actually could make us better because a lot of things that they’re doing in practice – and there’s a lot of them making progress – then showed up in the game,” McDaniels said. “It kind of always happens that way, where you’re doing a lot of this stuff. And then until you actually play a game and then you see it show up there, it’s hard to sink in, but I think that will be – that point will be made.”