Silver And Black Pride
Isiah Pola-Mao, Germaine Pratt have skillset to be takeaway artists in Las Vegas
See ball, get ball.
That’s the core of Pete Carroll’s coaching philosophy. It’s an emphasis on the fundamentals of football that provide the foundation to run the ball physically and be aggressive and opportunistic on defense.
Mix all that with maximum effort and focus and you’ve got a time-tested Carroll style.
Instilling that upon his Las Vegas Raiders began back during OTAs and minicamp. With the Silver & Black knee deep in training camp, the head coach and his staff are working to not only attain that mentality, but put it into practice.
And that’ll be something worth watching.
Because the Raiders are a team in dire need of the see ball, get ball on on both sides of the ball. But especially for a Las Vegas defense that finished 29th out of the 32 teams in takeaways in 2024. The team’s inability to force turnovers frequently last season was so bad, that if this rendition of the Raiders got even an ounce of Carroll’s philosophy, it’d make for a quantum leap for Patrick Graham’s defense.
Let’s look at five defenders that have the skillset to be takeaway artists for Las Vegas:
A tall (6-foot-4, 205 pounds) and rangy defender, the undrafted free agent from USC enters his fourth year as a Raider after the new regime of Carroll and general manager John Spytek gave the safety a two-year, $7.45 million contract extension earlier in the offseason.
Playing in all 17 games in 2024 (starting 14 of them), Pola-Mao logged 954 defensive snaps (86 percent of the unit’s total) while also showing up on special teams with 152 snaps. The super sized safety cut his teeth the first two seasons with the Raiders from 2022-23 as a core special teamer who developed into defensive contributor.
While Pola-Mao may only have one-career interception, Graham deploys the safety in a variety of manners. And if the game continues to slow down for him, Pola-Mao has an excellent shot of not only being a ballhawk on the back end with his size and speed, but forcing more fumbles (he had two last season) that can result in takeaways. Both of those forced fumbles were recovered by Las Vegas and is a great example of Carroll’s philosophy.
Waxed by the Cincinnati Bengals and quickly scooped up by the Raiders, the 29-year-old enters his seventh season in the league. At 6-foot-3 and 250 pounds, the North Carolina State product brings a physical presence at linebacker. He’s a tackling machine who racked up 143 total tackles in 17 games (17 starts) for Cincinnati in 2024.
But more importantly, during his time with the Bengals, Pratt proved to be takeaway talented. He has seven interceptions (six of which came the last three seasons) and seven forced fumbles total so far in his career. And Pratt frequently gets his hands on the ball with a total of...
