Raiders DT Christian Wilkins on Productive First Game

The Las Vegas Raiders made one of the biggest splashes in free agency by signing defensive lineman Christian Wilkins. While he had a productive day individually, he wants more from the defensive line.

Las Vegas Raiders DT Christian Wilkins / Darrell Craig Harris, Sports Illustrated

The Las Vegas Raiders struggled on offense against the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday.

However, multiple players on the Raiders' defense had a productive game against the Chargers, including veteran defensive lineman Christian Wilkins, who finished Sunday’s game with the second-most tackles of anyone on the Raiders' defense.

Raiders general manager Tom Telesco brought Wilkins in to make a difference on a defensive line with multiple talented players who needed help on the interior. In the team’s first game of the season against an AFC West opponent, Wilkins made numerous plays that impacted the stat sheet and a few that did not affect the stat sheet in his favor but still helped the defense.

Wilkins was vital to the defense’s ability to slow down the Chargers rushing attack for most of the game. The veteran defensive lineman routinely stuffed the middle of the line, making it hard for the Chargers to get much of anything on the ground until late in the game. 

Wilkins said his successful first outing with the Raiders resulted from a productive offseason by him and his fellow defensive linemen. He said he processed many things, both positive and negative, after reviewing the film.

Still, Wilkins said winning as a team is more important than his success and that the team winning is the ultimate purpose of the hard work he puts in over the offseason.

“I mean, obviously, you work so hard throughout the offseason, and you work so hard in training camp and try to build the right stuff to produce [individual] wins,” Wilkins said. “But something else we do talk about here is the process over the result. Obviously, you want to win. You expect to win every game, or else there's no point of going out there. 

“But, yeah, once you look at the tape and once you take a step back from it all, you can start to process those things a little bit. Even sometimes when you win, you don't play great. You don't play perfect. Obviously, that’s what you want, win and loss columns, but there are things to find. There are positives or lessons to learn from when [we] win, lose, or draw.”

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