After the decision to hire head coach Antiono Pierce, one of the most pivotal maneuvers of the Raiders’ offseason was the decision to hire Luke Getsy as the team’s offensive coordinator.
It’s no secret that Getsy was not the team’s first choice, but he was a coach that Pierce was interested in from the start. Getsy will bring a new offensive scheme to the Raiders and one of the already noticeable differences has been the pre-snap movement he is utilizing.
Raiders radio host JT The Brick talked about that dynamic this week.
“There’s a lot of motion [with Luke Getsy],” JT said on his weekday Raider Nation Radio show. “There’s a lot of different looks. There are players in motion, tight ends in motion, tight ends in the slot. I’m encouraged by that.”
“I work for the Raiders, so when Josh McDaniels was the head coach, I didn’t come to my meetings with a pitchfork telling him he sucked,” JT continued. “But what I was disappointed [in] with Josh McDaniels was there was no motion. There was no elaborate play calling. Everything looked totally vanilla in camp and in the regular season. I’m not seeing that from Luke Getsy. I’m seeing the opposite. I’m seeing everybody in motion. I’m seeing some really good crossing patterns [and] stuff that I’ve been screaming [about] for over a decade.”
It’s encouraging that Getsy is bringing a competent scheme to Las Vegas, but he still has a few details working against him in his first year with the team. His scheme is unfamiliar to most of his offensive players (or was going into the offseason) and the quarterback situation is far from figured out as the Raiders enter the final days of training camp.
The good news for Getsy is that his offense shouldn’t need to score a lot of points to win games this year.
For years, the Raiders have asked their offenses to carry bad defenses (an achievement they were not often able to accomplish), but the opposite looks to be the case this year. The Raiders should have a top-ranked defense this season and with just a little competence on offense, they have a team fully capable of 10+ wins.
x: @raidersbeat