Todd Haley Talks About The Raiders Game

The Kansas City Chiefs are preparing for the most important Chiefs/Raiders game in recent memory.

If the Chiefs can get a victory over their division rivals it will go a long way in distancing them from the other team’s in the AFC West. If they lose, however, the Raiders will be a mere ½ game back of KC and the division will be up for grabs.

Getting the win over a Raiders team that is playing well will be hard enough but the fact that it is a road game makes the task even more daunting.

Todd Haley talked a little bit about the Raiders and playing in Oakland in his daily press conference yesterday.

“It’s a fun place to go play a football game like I said but our focus is really on this team, on our team first and foremost and what we have to do to make little incremental steps for us and then on their team, which is an imposing team that runs the ball extremely well, is playing defense at a high level, scoring a lot of points offensively, kickers that really do change the game, and they’re doing a lot of things well that will make it a very, very difficult challenge,” said Haley.

Haley has a longstanding dislike for the Raiders dating back to his childhood when his father worked for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He admitted that the Raiders seem to have a certain mystique.

You hear the words, ‘The Raider Mystique,’ you feel it, you see it, but it started way back and I think it started with Mr. Davis and was carried on through the years through their coaches like coach (John) Madden and some of their players – (Ken) Stabler, Dave Casper, Mad Stork (Ted Hendricks), Lester Hayes,” said Haley. “There are countless Raiders that when I think of football growing up, those were the guys, the Raiders and the Cowboys and that’s just the way it was back about the time I was finding my way through things.”

Still, Haley has his players prepared for the unique environment they will encounter when the play in Oakland.

I think it’s one of the unique places that you go in the NFL and some of these young guys that haven’t been in the league or Oakland hasn’t been one of their teams or they’re not a West Coast guy that’s maybe been to some games, I think you need to lay it out there a little bit that it’s a little different from how you enter the field and like I said, the parking lot, you’ll always see some interesting things,” said Haley.

“But it’s football and the field is the same as everywhere we go.”