The Oakland Raiders began their first set of voluntary workouts in the Dennis Allen era this week. Ordinarily, the first set of voluntary workouts, where the coaches cannot even be on the field when the players are, does not result in a high attendance rate. However, given the fact that the Raiders have a new head coach and new offensive and defensive schemes, the Raiders came out in massive numbers. In an interview, Allen said that while it was not 100% attendance, it was definitely above 90%.
Here are some other tid bits from the interview:
On the work being done with the strength and conditioning coaches - "I’ve been real pleased with it, the guys are really working hard, the strength coaches come up here every day and give me an update on how everybody is doing and I’ve been real pleased with the work we’ve got done so far."
On impressions from his first few days with the new team - "Well, I think the thing that I would look at with these guys, I would say these guys are eager, they’re eager for change, they’re eager for getting an opportunity to get started, they’re looking forward to a clean slate, and I’ve been pleased with their eagerness to work."
On the injuries for Darren McFadden, Matt Shaughnessy and Jacoby Ford - "I can’t necessarily answer that question because I haven’t seen that with my own eyes, but based on the reports that I’m getting, these guys are, if they’re not fully 100 percent they’re pretty close and they’re ready to go."
On the Raiders recent history of injury problems - "We don’t look at anything as a fluke around here. We’re always trying to evaluate anything within the program and see if there’s anything we can do to make that better. We’re looking at, OK, if we have a lot of hamstring injuries, what can we do from a strength and conditioning standpoint to correct that? What we do from a chiropractic standpoint to correct that? From a training room standpoint, what can we do? Is there something a field maintenance standpoint we can do? We’re going to look at everything within the organization that we can to try and help our players stay healthy to give us the best chance to win."
On his time with the New Orleans Saints and Bounty Gate - "What I’m going to say about it is, No. 1, I’m proud of the success that we were able to have there, and No.2 , I’ve moved on, and I’m really a lot more interested in what’s happening with the Oakland Raiders and trying to prepare ourselves for the upcoming season. What’s happened in the past, I’ve really moved on."