The Las Vegas Raiders will begin the Klint Kubiak era on Sept. 13 with their Week 1 game against the Miami Dolphins. While the Silver and Black are in a rebuild, it’s the ideal opponent to face to get off to a 1-0 start.
Moreover, the Raiders will have their star players healthy out of the gate, as last season Maxx Crosby and Brock Bowers dealt with injuries, which eventually led the team to shut them down toward the end of the campaign.
On Sept. 7, Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley spoke to the media and was asked about facing the Raiders’ two stars on offense and defense. Beginning with Crosby, Hafley notes that his offense needs to know where the Raiders pass rusher is on every run and passing play.
“I think it’s both, but you better know where he is,” Hafley told reporters. “He’s one of the elite defenders in the league who plays with a relentless motor. You can’t just go into a game and say, ‘Hey, everybody take it nice and easy, Maxx.’ No, you better know where he is.
“But then there’s times when we’re going to use our rules and play football. And then there’s times when he’s a guy that you better game-plan around because he’s another guy that can wreck a game. And we’ve all seen him do that.”
Dolphins’ Jeff Hafley Expects Brock Bowers to Be a Problem
Meanwhile, Hafley will have most of his focus on the Raiders offense, given his defensive background. On that side of the ball, the Dolphins head coach will need to scheme to take Bowers away from Kirk Cousins.
“He is an elite tight end,” Hafley added. “Just watching the tape, I have a ton of respect for him as a player, and he’s totally shown he has the ability to change games. It just depends on how you use him. A tight end could all of a sudden wind up in the C area over here playing in the tight end position and then shift on the snap and be over here.
“[The Raiders] can line him up in the slot. They can go one by three and put him on the backside of a nub. They can go three by one and put him all the way flexed out like an X receiver. He gives them the ability to use him, lining him up as a tight end and lining him up as a wide receiver.
“It kind of creates an extra variable than, say, ‘Hey, it’s their X receiver. I know he’s going to be into the boundary in 3×1, or I know he’s going to be the field in 2×2.’ Then you can start game-planning coverage for him based on what side he’s on. This gives you another element where they can move him around even more. You just got to have a good plan because you better know where he is, and we’ll have a bunch of adjustments for that.”
David Carr on How Raiders Will Use Brock Bowers
Furthermore, the Dolphins should expect the Raiders to look at Bowers a lot. Recently, former NFL QB David Carr believes Kubiak will use the tight end in a similar way he used Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
“They’re looking [Bowers’] direction a lot,” Carr said on the Sept. 3 edition of “Home Grown.” “They do such a good job because people are like, ‘Oh, well, they’re going to know.‘ They knew where JSN was. In Seattle, every snap, and he still had 15 targets a game. That’s exactly how I see Bowers being used.”
Dolphins’ Jeff Hafley Gets Blunt on Raiders’ Maxx Crosby, Brock Bowers