It was a light day for the Raiders. Coming off two days off, they took the field of their indoor facility without pads.
Maxx Crosby was on the field for the stretching period but left when they started drills and didn’t return. Without any other details, it’s possible it was just a day off.
Jimmy Garoppolo looked smooth today. Certainly more so than he did last weekend when he was picked off at least six times in two days.
Garoppolo started things off with a couple off-target throws — one that was behind Davante Adams and another that was too high for Hunter Renfrow — but settled in and had a nice day.
He finished out the first team session with touchdown passes to his top three receivers. First a goal line pass to Renfrow, then touchdowns in the back corners of the end zone, first to Jakobi Meyers on the left side with Jakorian Bennett in tow and then to Davante Adams who shook Marcus Peters on the right side.
The trio of Adams, Meyers, and Renfrow had several catches each form Garoppolo on the day, so there was good distribution. Most important of all Jimmy G had no picks ahead of facing his former team.
But, again, the conditions were ideal indoors with no pads.
Basically, you can’t glean much from what we saw today. It’s the calm before the storm.
The storm arrives Thursday when the 49ers come to town for joint practices.
“It’s just an opportunity to, number one, compete,” Josh McDaniels said of the joint practices. “That’s an important part of this because I think that makes everybody better and you see some competitive fire out of everybody.
“Two, I think it’s an opportunity for you to really test your fundamentals, your discipline, the details and techniques that you’ve been working on for months against yourself, against bags and shells and all those things, and now you have an opportunity to go out there and kind of see where you’re at. And your rules have to kind of lead the way because you never know what you’re going to see necessarily.”
Just as the players were looking forward to the start of camp, then the first day in pads, they are looking forward to this next step of facing someone other than their teammates.
If this year is anything like last year, these practices are the only time the entrenched starters will see an outside opponent. Last year most of the core guys didn’t play in the actual preseason games. Making these joint practices all the more important for regular season prep.
