Raiders flip the script, focus on a defense-first attack heading into the 2024 season

Maxx Crosby might have spent more time standing on the sideline watching his fellow starting defensive teammates on the Raiders in training camp than he will all season, and certainly more than he would have preferred.

The superstar edge rusher didn’t have a choice, as he was so disruptive in practice that coach Antonio Pierce felt compelled to hold him out at times to give the starting offense a better chance at a successful stretch. Crosby was the runaway leader in such forced breaks, but he wasn’t the only defender held out for the same reason.

New $110 million defensive tackle Christian Wilkins, nonstop-aggressive linebacker Robert Spillane and ballhawk cornerback Jack Jones also had to take breathers on certain days where they were single-handedly suffocating the offense. 

“All those guys are playing at a high level,” Pierce said of his defense overall after a recent practice. “It’s a very tight-knit group. You can see the energy and excitement they have for one another when they make plays. They expect to dominate, and they’re doing such.”

Wielding a showstopping, playmaking defense is a long-awaited, welcome change for the Raiders organization going into the 2024-2025 NFL season.

No other franchise in the NFL has struggled more in limiting opponents to score in the 22 years since the Raiders last won a playoff game.

But Las Vegas’ defensive troubles started to fade last year under then second-year defensive coordinator Patrick Graham, and then totally dissipated once Pierce took over as interim coach. The Raiders ranked first in the league in scoring defense, giving up only 16 points per game, in the nine games they played with Pierce at the helm.

On paper, this year’s stop unit should be even better. Almost everyone is back including Graham, who interviewed for head-coaching jobs and was a finalist for the position with the Seattle Seahawks.

Last season only strengthened Graham’s reputation as one of the top defensive minds in the league, and this year, he gets to head a group that has starters returning at 10 of 11 positions.

The only exception is Wilkins, who was the consensus top defensive free-agent available on the market after improving in each of his first five NFL seasons with the Miami Dolphins.

“We’ve got a chance (to be a great defense),” Wilkins said. “But it’s the same mindset, same approach and we can’t go off what everybody else is saying—good, bad or indifferent. We’ve just got to build each and every day.”

Graham said it would be “a recipe for disaster” if his players looked back on last year’s glories and assumed they could pick up right where they left off. They’re heeding his words.

No one is doing so, not even the players who were central to the ascent. They’re wholly unwilling to even discuss monumental moments like the 20-14 Christmas Day win on the road at the Kansas City Chiefs.

Kansas City didn’t lose again for the rest of the season, ultimately winning Super Bowl 58 at Allegiant Stadium, and the Las Vegas victory was almost entirely driven by defense.

The unit had back-to-back touchdowns in the second quarter, including an interception off eventual third-time Super Bowl MVP quarterback Patrick Mahomes that Jones returned 33 yards into the end zone.

Jones in many ways felt like the final missing piece that enabled Las Vegas to hit its full defensive potential last year. The Raiders claimed him offwaivers in mid-November following a troubled three-year tenure with the New England Patriots.

Pierce, who also coached Jones in high school at Long Beach Poly and in college at Arizona State, believed he could get the best out of the former fourth-round pick and vouched for him to team owner Mark Davis. The vision was almost immediately realized, as Jones performed like a true No. 1 cornerback with the Raiders.

The 26-year-old is emblematic of how the Raiders built what they hope turns out to be one of the best defenses in franchise history. The unit is not homegrown, though former general manger Mike Mayock deserves credit for uncovering Crosby as the centerpiece gem in the fourth round of the 2019 NFL Draft.

Crosby’s counterpart on the other side of the line, edge rusher Malcolm Koonce, is also looking like quite the find in the third round of the 2021 NFL Draft after a breakout late last season.

But the other stars, including Wilkins and Jones, were plucked from other teams. A pair of free-agent pickups from last year, Spillane (previously with the Pittsburgh Steelers) and strong safety Marcus Epps (Philadelphia Eagles), were named captains before ever playing a snap in the silver and black.

Epps shored up the long-deficient back end of the defense and brought the best out of 2022 second-round pick Tre’von Moehrig at free safety. He’s soft-spoken and quiet in contrast to the fiery Spillane, whom Crosby calls “the best linebacker I’ve ever played with.”

Spillane vowed at the beginning of last year that the Raiders’ defense would, “be up there with the best,” and that it was leaving behind being “looked at as a weak point, one of the weakest defenses in the league.”

He delivered on the vow but isn’t satisfied. The fact that most projections have the Raiders as one of the worst overall teams in the league this year continues to drive him.

“I try to not see it, but I’m pissed off,” Spillane said. “I’m angry. Not just about that ranking, but a lot of rankings that go on, and of course, it adds to the fuel to the fire … You don’t want to care, but at the end of the day you want respect.”

Crosby has declined to discuss external expectations, but Jones said the three-time Pro Bowler addressed the team at training camp by reading some of the poor predictions for the Raiders’ record.

“We’re going to show everybody that 6-11 is crazy,” Jones said. “I’m going to lose 11 times throughout the year? I’m going to lose more than I win? I don’t like that. That’s not who we are. That’s not why we’re working. That’s not why we’re here. We’re going to step up and we’re going to show why.”

But, for the first time in years, pessimism around the Raiders isn’t because of the defense. It’s much more about an uncertain offense breaking in a new quarterback, Gardner Minshew, and rebuilding itself after the departure of a franchise great, running back Josh Jacobs.

The defense, in fact, may have inadvertently contributed to the skepticism about the Raiders being able to score enough points by controlling so much of training camp.

Being more confident in their defense than their offense is a whole new world for the Raiders. But they believe in the unfamiliar formula, one that was best summarized by a viral message Pierce extended to the rest of the league via Raiders.com earlier in the summer.

“There are two gentlemen that are in this building every day before the coaches—Maxx Crosby, Christian Wilkins,” Pierce said. “They happen to be on the same D-line playing next to each other. God bless everybody else. Don’t worry about our quarterbacks, buddy. Worry about yours.”

This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.