Jon Gruden: “Deshaun Watson is Throwing the Football Better Than Ever”

The Oakland Raiders are preparing hard for their game against the Houston Texans. It will be the fifth straight game on the road for Jon Gruden and his boys, but it appears that the Raiders are more than willing to embrace the challenge, than whine about it.

“We’re anxious to finish this road trip,” said Gruden at the media session this Wednesday, “it’s been a lot of fun. You know this schedule that we have here, be a great challenge here, with the Texans, another playoff team in a hostile environment.”

The Raiders are now 3-3, and having in mind that they played just two games at home since the season started, it could be said that this is an excellent record. Those games at the Coliseum were against the Broncos at the season opener, 24-16, and versus the Chiefs 10-28. The wins on the road were in London when Raiders beat the Chicago Bears with 24-21, and in Indianapolis, 31-24.

The Texans who are 4-3, lost against the Colts at the Lucas Oil Stadium last week, and that is something which gives hope for Oakland. Yet again, the Raiders head coach knows that his team will have one hell of a task this Sunday. They will have to face one of the best quarterbacks in the league at the moment, Deshaun Watson.

“He’s got a lot of freedom at the line of scrimmage to fix plays. He’s great athlete, he can escape, he can run for touchdowns,” said Gruden and added that right now, Watson’s passing game is better than before. “He’s throwing the ball better then he’s throwing it at any point in his career.”

So far this year, Watson threw for 1,952 yards and had 13 touchdowns along with 5 interceptions. Meanwhile, he didn’t run as everyone expected, just 196 yards on 35 carries for 5 TDs.

Gruden also stated that his team needs to be very cautious about Hoston’s receiving core, and that especially applies to DeAndre Hopkins, arguably the best wide receiver in the league. On the other side, his offense will have to be ready to face JJ Watt, and that is also something they will have to prepare for.

“They have one of the best players on the planet JJ Watt,” Derek Carr said to the reporters. “He’s been terrorizing this league for however long he’s been in it.”

Some of the reporters began asking questions about the Raiders’ playoff push, and whether would it be possible to see silver and black in the postseason already this year. Gruden didn’t want to go into that, and decided to bring back the focus on Sunday’s game, refusing to give any comments about anything else but the game against the Texans.

“I try not to get into the playoff hype right now, we’re more interested in making the corrections from last week and finding a way to win another game.”

Following the match in Houston, the Raiders will have three games at home, against the Detroit Lions and the divisional rivals, the LA Chargers, and the Cincinnati Bengals. If they will all three, or at least two, Oakland will stay in the combination for the wild card spot, especially as they have a visit to New York to meet the sorry Jets after all these matches.

It opens up a possibility for Gruden’s guys to make a nice streak of positive results, which would be of the utmost importance for the playoffs battle. But first, they need to take care the contest in Texas this weekend.

The game at Lucas Oil stadium starts this Sunday at 1:25 ET.