When Ken Norton Jr. was hired to be the new defensive coordinator of the Oakland Raiders back in February, his excitement was obvious.
The longtime NFL linebacker and assistant coach has been waiting for his time. And that time finally has come.
He told reporters at the time that he was eager to work with new head coach Jack Del Rio to put together a defensive unit similar to the one he worked on in Seattle, where he was linebackers coach.
“You watch our defenses over the last few years, how physical, how smart, how dominant they’ve been up front, out-hitting, out-hustling and doing all these aggressive things,” Norton said. “Jack has a fantastic background with his defense as well. My philosophy combined with his philosophy, we’re going to sit down in a room and just work it out and then make it the Raiders philosophy.”
Now, after bringing in free agents and rookies through the draft, Norton and Del Rio are finally getting a chance to put that defense into place. Veterans and first-year players alike got a chance last week to get their first hands-on experience with it in the first wave of organized team activities (OTAs).
One player who expects nothing but positive things to come from Norton’s hiring is linebacker Malcolm Smith. Smith, a former Seahawks linebacker who was MVP of the Super Bowl two seasons ago when Seattle won the NFL championship, signed with Oakland as a free agent this offseason and says he intends to bring a championship mentality to his new team.
Smith says Norton will, too, as a very demanding coach. He says Norton has a fire in him that sometimes burns players who make mistakes.
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“He’s going to be hard on us and he hasn’t had a chance to yet, because we’re just getting started,” Smith told reporters last week. “But I know it’s coming. You can see it and there’s going to be days where you might not want to look at him, but you know it’s for a good reason and the benefit will be the product on the field.”
Smith noted, too, that because Norton and Del Rio are former standout NFL linebackers, the pressure’s going to be on the Oakland linebacking corps to lead the way.
“You have to be on point,” Smith told the team’s website. “I take it as a responsibility, like man, our defensive coordinator was a linebacker, our head coach was a linebacker, we have to be the standard. We have to be the standard for the entire team.”
