Josh Norman Slammed Raiders Receivers After Blowout Win

A lot of people were surprised by how thoroughly the Washington Redskins dominated the Oakland Raiders. Josh Norman wasn’t.

The All-Pro cornerback was rather emotional after the 27-10 thrashing in which the Raiders offense was completely shut down by the Redskins defense. The source of the issues were their wide receivers, who only caught seven passes on the night. Derek Carr managed just 118 yards passing total. The entire unit seemed out of sync and flustered. Most of that was due to how well Washington was shutting them down in coverage, led of course by Norman.

So what prompted this? Norman hinted that it began with some pregame trash talking. Apparently Amari Cooper and Michael Crabtree were jawing at him and the rest of the Redskins secondary, claiming they would each put up 200 yards. Norman and the others seemed to take that personal and proceed to stuff those words down their throats the rest of the night.

“What was personal, other than them getting their tails whupped?”

"I mean, first and foremost, you don’t come up in here and say what you’re going to put up on somebody. Two hundred yards? [Crabtree] didn’t catch two balls. He only caught one, huh? So please, whatever you do, do not run your mouth if you’re a wide receiver and expect to show up on Sundays, because I’m telling you, we are here and we are waiting.“Don’t come out here and tell me what you’re going to do. Show me. You’re going to have to run through me to get that.”“Whatever that young cat said, Coop, go and take it back,” Norman said. “Crabtree? I have nothing to say to you. Yes, I may be Cover 2, but I’m Cover 1 too. I’m Cover 1, Cover 2, Cover 3 and Cover 4. All of them. All of the ingredients to make a perfect attack. We do all the extra stuff. When you come out on this field, you going to see about us.”"

It was a night of vindication of sorts for the Redskins defense. They’d been hounded on all sides for the past year about how they’re the weakness of the team. This wasn’t helped when they gave up 30 points to the Eagles on opening day. With the red hot Raiders coming in, most expected either a shootout or a blowout in favor of Oakland. Seems Washington finally had enough and took it out on the bewildered AFC contender.