The Oakland Raiders hit the practice field at their Napa Valley Training Complex Sunday morning as Training Camp 2008 continues. Raiders Head Coach Lane Kiffin spoke with the media immediately following practice.
Q: I know it’s real early but at this point who are the candidates to return punts and kicks?
Raiders Head Coach Lane Kiffin: We have a bunch of guys. If we were to play today, preseason, we would look at [Tyvon] Branch on the kickoffs and Johnnie Lee [Higgins] on the punts. Johnnie Lee is fielding the ball really. We just have to see it carry over to the games. He had some ball security issues last year, but his confidence continues to grow as a receiver and a returner.
Q: Justin Fargas had a huge year for you last year. How has he looked at camp, and what are your expectations for him?
Coach Kiffin: I think even when you have a dynamic competitor like Justin, competition helps everybody. I think by drafting Darren [McFadden] that Justin looks better than he ever has before. I think it was a positive thing, and he took it the right way. He is excited and it goes back to that these guys are tired of losing. You don’t hear players complaining about who we drafted or what free agent we brought in at their position, they just want to win. Justin [Fargas] is a great example. Nnamdi [Asomugha] coming in on time even though he didn’t have to shows you that we are going in the right direction.
Q: I know you are working on tackling and improving that, but how do you work on that when you don’t want guys going to the ground right now? What are you doing to emphasize the tacking?
Coach Kiffin: You just have to work on form tackling drills, continue to put guys in those situations as much as you can. We obviously don’t want to bring guys to the ground. That’s about all you can do until you start to play the pre-season games. I think we have added some very good tacklers to our unit, and nobody talks about DeAngelo [Hall] but you could make a really good case about DeAngelo tackling and coming up and hitting people. He is just not a cover corner. He has made a number of hits and he has played in a cover-two system where he would come up sometimes and hit guys in the flat. He will throw himself in there and he is going to help as well.
Q: You talked at the mandatory camp about Terdell [Sands]. What do you see now? He looks fairly enthusiastic out there, and he’s bouncing around a little bit more. Does he look like he has kind of turned the corner in that way?
Coach Kiffin: Terdell [Sands], two years ago before I was here, had a good year and did some really good things. His weight was down, and he was going the right direction. His weight is down. It is as low as it has been since I have been here, but not as low as it was two years ago. He has a good bounce to his step and he is practicing harder. He is focused on football. We need him to play and we need him to help because he is a dominant run player at times and if we could get him to do that at a consistent level then it would be an exciting thing.
Q: How does Sam Williams look?
Coach Kiffin: Sam is in a real competition. We have Sam in there. We have Robert Thomas in there battling away. We were giving Grant Irons some reps in there before he got hurt. That spot is wide open. It is a position we are really focused on. There are competitions at a lot of spots, but on defense a lot of those spots are kind of set. Somebody is way ahead of somebody, but that spot is not. So we have to continue to figure it out. We have looked at Ricky Brown there, and it is wide open. We love everything about [Sam], the way that he goes about special teams, the way that he prepares and everything. We just need him to stay healthy and he was playing well at the beginning of the year last year before he got hurt. We just need to continue to build on that.
