Rich Bisaccia still believes in Raiders’ fighting spirit

Interim coach thinks Las Vegas can salvage the 2021 season

Las Vegas Raiders interim head coach Rich Bisaccia has a lot to worry about these days as he tries to keep the staggering 5-5 team in the AFC playoff race.

The offense is flailing and the team is coming off back-to-back home games in which it was outscored by a total of 73-27. The Raiders, stuck in a three-game losing streak, have to quickly find a way to get it together as it prepares to play at the 7-3 Dallas Cowboys on Thursday.

It‘s certainly a daunting time for Bisaccia and his staff. However, one thing is clear — he still believes that his team is giving its best effort.

“We’ve been fighting. Fighting to me comes from the soul and it’s the heart of a man,” Bisaccia said Monday. “I don’t see those issues on tape. I feel like we’ve done a good job of battling. I think certainly the Kansas City game got away from us a little bit at the end and maybe this game paralleled that one a little bit to some degree. We’ve had trouble extending third downs on offense and then like I talked about earlier, we’ve shot ourselves in the foot a little bit defensively.

We had them stopped on multiple third downs, we’ve gotten penalties and then when they got in some manageable third downs, we haven’t had a chance to stop them. So, when you put your defense out there time and time and time again and at times they are going to break. There is going to be a give in the wall.

So, we have to do a better job offensively to keep our defense off the field, extend the third downs. But I don’t see the fight or the will of our team or the will of the individual men in there being an issue. I don’t see an issue in our effort or our ability to compete until the bitter end. But everyone has their take on it. I feel like we have to do a better job at executing our plays.”

Photo by Chris Unger/Getty Images

Bisaccia also said he and the coaching staff thinks the team is capable of turning around the season and he thinks the players feel that way too.

“I’d like to think so. I know we do as coaches. I know we’re always going to look inward first. What did we do wrong?,” Bisaccia said. “Then, after that, you look at what are our problems, what solutions do we have to fix our problems and that’s how we’re going to go about it in the meetings giving that to our players. So, it will be an interesting week. It’s a short week just like it is for every team that plays on a Thursday night. We’ll be in a lot of meetings, a lot of walk throughs. I think we’re 48 hours out from getting on a plane and playing on Thursday. Hopefully we’ll get us in position to have a belief system going into the game that we can do some things against our opponents that’ll help us score points and win the game.”

Perhaps the short week will help the Raiders snap out of their funk because there’s little time to sit and think about all of their current issues.