Dave Ziegler on Why Raiders Struggled to Win Close Games

The Las Vegas Raiders were closer to the postseason than their 6-11 record suggested.

Of their 17 games, 13 were decided by a matter of one possession, and nine of those 13 ended in favor of the opponent.

Raiders General Manager Dave Ziegler discussed what went wrong in those tight games and how the club can change those outcomes in the future when he joined the "Bussin' With The Boys" podcast.

"At the end of the day, we weren’t good enough," Ziegler said. "That’s the fact of the matter to win those games. And so, I think, when you look at them, a lot of games in football and a lot of our games this year, there’s three or four plays in each game that didn’t go our way. And so you start to dig in: ‘Why?’ Like, you have to start asking the question: ‘Why? Why didn’t they go that way?’ And again, some of them -- there’s a lot of different reasons. I would say the one thing that I think is important to have to being able to -- I’ll say it like this: I think the thing that’s important to win those close games is you have to have a group of 11 guys who, in those critical moments, can all execute their assignment and be synchronized with each other. And I think at times, we just, we weren’t able to do that. For whatever the reason is. And there could be a lot of reasons to that.

"And I’ve talked about this in other interviews; I think one thing that’s important to me in terms of building the team and improving the team is improving also, I think, the football intelligence on our team. Situational football, situational awareness, and some of that comes from who you’re bringing in, some of that comes from how you teach it. And all those things kind of come together. But building a smart, tough, physical football team that can perform in the critical situations is kind of the philosophy and is something that is really important to us as a Raider organization.

"And so, I think to do that, we have to continue to find the pieces in the different rooms, whether it’s the linebacker room, whether it’s the defensive back room, the receiver room, whatever, find players who embody that and can do that in those critical moments. And I think if we can do that, I think, eventually we’ll end up turning the tides on those close games and those close games will be the games that we’ll win.”

The 2023 NFL Draft will go from April 27-29 and be held at Union Station in Kansas City, Mo. The NFL Scouting Combine is Feb. 28-March 6, 2023, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Ind. The club's deadline to designate Franchise or Transition Players is March 7, 2023, before 4 p.m. EST.

March 13-15 is the free agent negotiation period. Starting at 12 p.m. EDT on March 13 and ending at 3:59:59 p.m. EDT on March 15, clubs are permitted to contact and enter into contract negotiations with the certified agents of players who will become Unrestricted Free Agents upon the expiration of their 2022 Player Contracts at 4 p.m. EDT on March 15.

The 2023 NFL Year and Free Agency period begins at 4 p.m. EDT on March 15. The Raiders are expected to be significant players in the free-agent market this season.

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