McDaniels: 'We Expected the Game to Come Down to the Fourth Quarter'

It seemed as though the Las Vegas Raiders' Week 7 matchup against the Houston Texans was once again going to be a close battle down to the end.

A 21-0 fourth quarter, however, would display a hungry Raiders team that hasn't really been seen yet this season -- at least not one that has been able to dominate for an entire fourth quarter.

"We talked about it at halftime," Raiders coach Josh McDaniels said after the victory. "There were a few things, subtle little adjustments that we tried to make. I didn't think we played very clean in the first half. Offensively, we had a couple penalties, had a couple penalties in the kicking game, fumbled a snap, just little things like that that created maybe harder situations than what we needed. So just talked about trying to do our job a little bit better.

"We expected our game to come down to the fourth quarter because, like I said, every one of our two teams has. So I thought they stepped up and played really well. I thought the communication was better. I thought the execution was better. And I thought the offensive group up front really gave Josh [Jacobs] an opportunity to get started a bunch of times there in the second half and was able to run it in."

Down 10-3 in the second quarter, it would have been easy for the Raiders to let frustration get the best of them.

But the message from McDaniels was to stay calm, as the head coach knew things were bound to start clicking.

"I think sometimes you can have a good week of practice, which I thought we did, and you come out and all of a sudden it's 10-3 and you're going like, 'Why isn't it easier than what it is?' McDaniels said. "And the reason is because the other team's pretty good, they're well coached and football's tough. The National Football league's hard. So just wanted them to: 'Hey, stay like this [leveled]. We don't need to go up and down and scream and throw helmets and rant and rave on the sideline.' That's really not going to do any good.

"I've learned about that over many years. And just [tried] to give them confidence that if we do our job the right way, which I didn't think we had done up until that point consistently, I thought we would be able to move the ball and be productive. And I think they saw that from themselves. That last drive in the second quarter and then start the third quarter and score three more drives. I thought that was really -- it's all them. The players win the game."

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