The second article with observations in review of the Raiders second pre-season game with the Cardinals.  Yesterday's piece involved Special Teams and Defense.  Today's will have some thoughts on the offense and specifically the offensive line.

For thoughts on the Raiders during games or throughout the day, follow me on Twitter @AsherMathews

Offense:
I spent the majority of my time in film review focusing on the offense to see why the first team has struggled as much as they have.  Part of the issue, I believe, is that the offensive line is still trying to adjust to the many nuances of the zone blocking scheme.  More on that in a moment.
 
The plays that resulted in the most success for the Raiders are the ones in which there is pre-snap movement. This is not unique to the Raiders, it's actually true for most if not all teams.  Pre-snap movement confuses the defense - they can become confused as to who to key on and that can lead to hesitation or outright mistakes.  Misdirection is an important tool for both offenses & defenses in today's NFL.
 
Knapp seems to understand this and used pre-snap movement a number of times throughout the game.  The presnap movement can be as simple as moving a TE across a formation and seeing how the defense adjusts or can include the FB, RB and wide receivers to confuse and misdirect.

After reviewing the game footage for the pre-season week 2 game against Arizona, here are some additional thoughts.  As always, for live-tweets during the game follow me on Twitter @AsherMathews

This post will cover Special Teams and Defense and a seperate post will cover the Offense in much more detail.

Special Teams:

Just like a game, I'm going to start with the opening kickoff.  KO returns have been handled by Jacoby Ford and he's struggled in this regard.  Part of that is the blocking in front of him which has been poor at times.  Part is that he hasn't shown the skills that made him so dangerous in this area in past years.  I'd say that Ford's injury hurts the Raiders much more in passing game than returns.

However, with Ford out indefinitely at this time with a foot injury it calls into question who will be returning punts and kicks.  On player who has prior experience at kickoff returns is DB Bryan McCann.  I don't know if Bryan McCann can make the final roster because his DB skills are not as good as others but the team may keep him as a dime DB and use him as their KR specialist.

The team is also unsettled at punt returner with Ford's absence and it's not entirely clear who will be taking his place.  McCann could be an option as well as Taiwan Jones who has had some time back there.  The team keeps trying Juron Criner at PR in camp but he's not practiced enough to catch it cleanly, consistently, with a number of drops when fielding kicks.

The Raiders dropped to 0-2 for the 2012 pre-season after losing to the Arizona Cardinals 31-27.

Most observers thought that the 2012 Oakland offense would hit the ground running and it would be the defense that would take time to gel and excel with the new schemes brought in by head coach Dennis Allen and defensive coordinator Jason Tarver.

However through two pre-season games the defense for the Raiders has looked very good and the offense has yet to score a touchdown.

The offense had two big opportunities to do so - the first on their second drive in the mid first quarter. QB Carson Palmer threw up a pass to rookie WR Rod Streater that he wasn't able to come down with but there was a call of pass interference on the play and the Raiders were given First & Goal at the 1 yard line. They were unable to convert in 3 attempts.

In the second, the Raiders 1st team offense again made it down to the goal line - about 3 yards out - and again was unable to advance in multiple downs. The team settled for fieldgoals by Sebastian Janikowski and he tacked another 46 yarder as well, all in the 1st half. Most of the starters played the entire first half which was the amount of time Allen had scheduled for them to play.

I took a look at the first quarter of the game, wanting to look at some of the first team and into the second team to get some thoughts.

-On the kickoff, Dan Bailey's placement was poor. I question whether Ford should've fielded it because the ball came down right near the sideline and short of the goal line area.  If he hadn't fielded it and it had taken a favorable bounce out of bounds the team would've started at the 40 after a penalty.

But, on the flip side, Ford was moving forward at a good pace, fielded it cleanly and had the return team given him a crease he could've had a great return as he was already at about the 10 or 15. The return team gave him absolutely nothing and he was swarmed over by Cowboys almost immediately.  The special teams bears some watching in future games.

-Darren McFadden had 38 yards on 3 touches which obviously bodes well.  His first, a 4 yard run round the right end was a good run but nothing amazing.  The next play was an 18 yard reception that looked good.What struck me was that McFadden could have actually gotten more yards had he followed his blocking a bit more.

The play started with McFadden in a shotgun formation to the left of Palmer but prior to the snap he moved to the right outside wide receiver position with Jacoby Ford in the R slot position to his left.  The linebacker that was assigned McFadden moved out with him indicating man covg.

Raiders head coach Dennis Allen updated the status of some of the team's injured players after practice yesterday in advance of Fridays's game with the Arizona Cardinals.

First, injured RB Mike Goodson, who was out with a neck injury following a very scary collision during a practice with pads last week returned to practice and is set to get his first playing time in Silver & Black tomorrow.

Goodson has been a positive force throughout the offseason and his enthusiasm for playing bubbled to the surface when asked about the game as he gushed, "I can't wait.  I can't wait.  I cannot wait."  Goodson appeared to be at full strength in practice and with both a CT and MRI coming back negative on injury to his neck he should be in line for a number of carries.

Inconsistency was the word of the game for the Raiders who were shut out at home in their 2012 preseason opener versus the Dallas Cowboys.

The starting offense only played a few series and moved the ball well but some miscues between QB Carson Palmer and WR Jacoby Ford kept them from capitalizing on Darren McFadden's hard running.

In the first drive, the Raiders moved down the field 38 yards after starting on their own 14 yard line, mostly on the strength of McFadden who had runs of 4 and 16 yards and added a reception for another 18 yards.  The fourth play of that drive was a deep pass down the left side where Palmer was trying to hit Ford for a long reception or possible TD but he threw an ill-advised pass into double coverage and Dallas S Gerald Sensabaugh, coming over from center field, was able to pick off the pass.

McFadden came out after that series and the Raiders struggled to move the ball with Lonyae Miller rushing.  Aside from McFadden virtually no player showed consistent play making ability on the offensive side of the ball as the Raiders dealt with drops, poor protection from the offensive line and an inability to run the ball on the Dallas D.

The exception was rookie UDFA standout Rod Streater who continued his solid offseason with six receptions for 66 yards.  At times he seemed to be the only player on the team that could get open and catch the ball.

The Raiders are limping into their first preseason game - literally for some players.  After being fairly low-injury for the first week of camp, the second week brought a multitude of lower limb injuries on players of most every position.

The Raiders are especially thin at linebacker where UDFA Mario Kurn suffered a knee injury that will put him on the I.R. list and he will not be able to recover for this season.

With Kurn's likely IR listing, the team is left with only 9 linebackers on the current squad.  Of the 9 players still on the active squad, four - Kaelin Burnett, Miles Burris, Chad Kilgore and Nathan Stupar - are rookies.

Also on the squad is Carl Ihenacho who is a second year player after being on the Raiders practice squad last year.  He has not played in a regular season game.  Therefore, more than half of the teams current linebacker corps has not played in a regular season NFL game.