Las Vegas Raiders S Chris Smith from the locker room

Raiders coach Antonio Pierce gave a speech earlier this week. Below is the full transcript of his statement.

Q: You obviously have a pretty young cornerback roster. I know Decamerion Richardson didn’t play yesterday, but there were some young players on the field last night. How do you feel about the depth at that position? I know you’ve talked about depth and the importance of it on this roster in particular.

Coach Pierce: “Yeah, I think it’s still a work in progress.”

Q: What is the biggest improvement you would like to see from your team in the future and what is your greatest achievement at the end of the preseason?

Coach Pierce: “Yeah, I want us to improve the line of scrimmage, both the offensive line and the defensive line. We talked about winning that, playing physical and dominating up front, and that didn’t show up in the preseason. And one thing I was really happy about was our return game. I think Tre Tucker and (Tyerik) McAllister both showed they can make big plays, we saw that last night. McAllister did a great job of returning that for us, and so did Tre Tucker.”

Q: You’ve now played three games, a whole training camp, and now you’re going into this first game. What qualities do you want your team to have?

Coach Pierce: “Yeah, physical, tough, don’t blink, don’t flinch and then handle situational football.”

Q: I know you mentioned last night that you consulted with Tom Telesco and obviously had to make some tough decisions about the roster before Tuesday. What are your priorities when you’re considering how to put together a roster, what the roster should look like in terms of depth and what position you rate higher as a defensive coach? How do you see the roster going forward?

Coach Pierce: “Yeah, well, first of all, I’m not a defensive coach, I’m the head coach, my background is defense. I look at everything overall. For me, special teams is number one, just making sure we’re in a good position there. We’ve got two kickers in Daniel (Carlson) and AJ (Cole) that can really change the game. But the depth, it goes back to the question earlier, you asked about the depth of the corner, just constantly improving that space. Between wide receivers and DBs, you lose those guys all the time during the season and you want to have depth, you want to feel good about it. And I think overall up front, when the game goes like it did last night and teams are running the ball, and you want to stop the run in certain situations, a four-minute position, or let’s say we got the ball in the red zone and you want to run it in, you want to finish those drives right. And those are the things we want to improve. I know Tom (Telesco) feels the same way. But to pretend we’re just going to sit there and change the roster over the next 48 hours, that’s not going to happen. A lot of the guys are going to be on our practice squad and that’s what makes up our 50-man roster here. Like everyone in the league, there’s going to be between five and eight players that know there’s going to be changes and that’s going to happen throughout the season, just by constantly rotating the bottom part of the roster.”

Q: A quick question on cornerbacks: Do you think you can count on Brandon Facyson to start the season? And if not, do you think those reserve and backup solutions are already on the roster or do you perhaps have to look outside?

Coach Pierce: “Yeah, we’ve got to get Brandon (Faycson) on the field. I can’t even evaluate him because we haven’t had him on the field yet. So it’s just tough and a lot of these younger cornerbacks have the edge because of it. It’s good for them to get reps in the preseason and training camp, but I’m not a fan of putting young cornerbacks on the field early when they’re not quite ready. So it would be good if Brandon (Faycson) was healthy.”

Q: How aggressive do you see yourself being on the waiver list this week?

Coach Pierce: “If we can get better, we can get better.”

Q: Ramel Keyton, another guy who kind of came alive on his last drive. We saw a lot of that in training camp. How pleased were you to see ’82 perform like that?

Coach Pierce: “I mean, yeah, we threw the ball a lot, he had eight targets. But no, man, it was really good to see because if you remember last week, he threw a ball out of his fingertips, didn’t quite make it. And he made some really, really difficult catches last night. Maybe not the best ball placement that he wanted, but two practices, I mean, he showed up and he was active, and you really felt him. And he’s a very talented player, I think he’s still trying to find his way in the pro game, and I think it was good for him to go out there last night and really show that in a critical situation in the game, now it’s either tie or we win. Obviously we kicked the field goal, but I think he’s a guy we’ve had our eye on early on, especially in the offseason program. And some other guys have kind of stepped up. You kind of forget about him a little bit because he’s not making one or two plays here. And then last night we asked these guys to really step up and make it tough for us the next 48 hours.

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