McDaniels on Going up Against Broncos' Vance Joseph

There will be a lot of different faces on the Denver Broncos' sideline on Sunday compared to what the Las Vegas Raiders were familiar with last year.

The big story, of course, is Broncos Coach Sean Payton, but there is also a new figure on the defensive side of things for Denver.

Longtime NFL coach Vance Joseph enters his first year as Denver's defensive coordinator. The veteran coach served as the Broncos' head coach in the 2017 and 2018 seasons.

"VJ [Vance Joseph] does a great job, and they kept some of the guys that were there last year too, which that's -- it's not a completely different staff on that side of the ball, which is interesting," Raiders Coach Josh McDaniels said when he addressed the media Friday. "Also, I think it says a lot about the guys that were there last year. They did a great job. This defense was ranked in the top five or six in almost every important metric last season, so they played really good football on that side of the ball for sure. And so, we've looked at Vance, and what Vance has done. Vance has a lot of experience and variety doing some different things based on his personnel. So, if his personnel is better to do this, then he'll do that.

"If his personnel is better to do something else, then he has enough flexibility within his scheme to be able to do that. That's why I have so much respect for him. And his players play the right way. They play hard, they're very disciplined. There's not a lot of easy things against this group. And so we've had a look at our opportunities against Vance in the past. We competed against him last year against Arizona. We've also looked at their preseason stuff, we've looked at some things that we saw last year against the Denver team that we're getting ready to play, because a lot of the players are similar or the same. So, you never know.

"We just kind of throw it all in the same bucket and say, 'We're probably going to get a bunch of this, some of it we may not, and we're definitely going to get something we're not practicing.' So that's always part of the anxiety of opening day is kind of getting into the game and going, 'Oh okay, well we didn't practice that.' You know what I mean? So, it's going to be important for us to follow our rules. You start the game with an idea of what you might see in each phase, but at the end of the day, I think this is where the training camp practices against another club are really important. Because when you go into those, you have no idea what they're going to do. They could try a hundred new things against you and you're the guinea pig. And so, really it tests your rules, it tests your discipline, tests your communication, and that's basically what opening day turns into."

The Silver and Black open the regular season at the Denver Broncos on Sunday, Sept. 10, at 4:25 p.m. EDT/1:25 p.m. PDT.

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