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Nakobe Dean wasn’t handing out exemptions Sunday. Not to his teammates. Certainly not to himself.
After the Rams took the Raiders out back for a 35-21 beating, the linebacker delivered a message that should follow every defensive player into the meeting room this week.
“We can’t all be individual mercenaries out there,” Dean said.
There is a difference between assembling a defense and becoming one. Between putting players in matching uniforms and getting them to function with the discipline, trust and shared responsibility necessary to stop somebody.
The Raiders offered another painful reminder Sunday. And that includes their defensive coordinator, Rob Leonard, who Rams head coach Sean McVay ran circles around on Sunday.
They entered with the NFL’s fifth-worst rush defense. It didn’t take a football expert to figure out that McVay, one of the game’s great offensive minds, would come straight at their biggest weakness.
Bring out the 13 personnel. Put three tight ends on the field. Challenge the Raiders to hold their ground.
Everybody could see it coming. The Raiders still couldn’t do anything about it.
The Rams rushed for 199 yards on 38 carries, repeatedly imposing their will on a defense that offered too little resistance. Los Angeles kept handing the ball off, and the Raiders kept failing to give McVay a reason to stop.
Being overmatched is troubling enough. Being overmatched by an attack you knew was coming demands some uncomfortable conversations.
But those conversations need to accomplish something.
Asked when the talking needs to stop and the production needs to begin, Dean needed two words.
“Right now.”
Four consecutive losses demand more than another promise to get back to work.
“We have to be real with each other,” he said. “Coaches have to be real with the players, players have to be real with the coaches. But players have to be real with each other. It’s going to come down to us. We have to make plays. It’s a results-based league. We need results.”
The most meaningful part of Dean’s assessment was where he placed himself in it.
“At this point, we know where we’re not good enough as a defense and we have to pick that up. It starts with me and it starts with us being real with each other. I’m probably going to start holding guys way more accountable. I feel like I already do that, but I guess there’s another level to it that we need to take it to because it’s not working right now.”
That last admission matters.
Whatever standard the Raiders believe they are enforcing, it isn’t producing acceptable football. Dean sounds willing to demand more, starting with himself.
Now those demands have to matter on Sundays.
Because knowing where the punch is coming from means nothing if you keep letting it land.