ALAMEDA– Marcel Reece has taken more than his share of long, somber plane rides back from Eastern-time-zone games during his seven seasons with the Raiders.

He’d experienced 16 straight return flights from losses in the East, in fact, and never taken one after a win. While he was a rookie with the Raiders when they beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh on Dec. 6, 2009, he was still on the practice squad and didn’t make the trip.

So, coming back from Cleveland following Oakland’s 27-20 victory in Week 3, Reece felt like he was riding on a cloud.

“Wins like that, you feel like you want the plane to go loop-de-loop,” the veteran fullback said Tuesday.

There is no mistaking the transformation of mood around the team’s practice facility after two consecutive victories. Suddenly, the Raiders locker room is a lively, happy, noisy, often rollicking place. Reece sees it, but maintains he’s seen it evolving since training camp.

“It’s just livelier in general,” he said. “It’s not just today. It’s every day. Obviously, it has a lot to do with Jack (Del Rio) and his coaching staff, and it trickles on down to the captains on the team and the rest of the players. But it’s all about having fun. Football is a fun game and we have to make fun out of it.”

The Raiders are having fun for the first time in years, but at the same time, they’re not getting too giddy.

“Coach Del Rio has been up front just trying to tell us that winning two games doesn’t mean anything,” said defensive tackle Dan Williams. “And he’s right. Two wins doesn’t achieve any of our goals. We want to win the West and we want to go to the playoffs. It’s always good to win because you can get a little momentum and confidence. But at the same time, we can’t get big-headed.”

Williams, who had a strong game in the middle Sunday as the Raiders limited Cleveland to just 39 yards rushing, hasn’t experienced any of the past Oakland miseries, having played his first five NFL seasons with Arizona before signing as a free agent with the Raiders this offseason.

Williams is just one of the players trying to change the culture and temper enthusiasm after a two-week taste of success, but he likes what he sees so far.

“We have a good group of veterans who’ve been at the top, and they know what it takes to continue this,” he said. “We just have to keep everybody’s eyes on the path that we’re going on right now.”

Offensive tackle Austin Howard, who was part of three other organizations before signing with Oakland last season, agreed.

“I believe we still haven’t come close to our target yet,” Howard said. “We have goals that are within us, and we’re coming closer and closer, but we still haven’t reached them. We’re getting better as a team, and we’re excited about what we can do, but the coaching staff has made sure we understand we’re not there yet.”

Developing a standard of consistency will be the Raiders’ next objective, Howard asserted, and that will be the challenge this week when Oakland goes on the road to Chicago for a very winnable game in which they are actually favored. The Raiders haven’t won three straight games since 2011.

“It’s about going out there each and every Sunday and making it happen,” he said. “Every week is different. You can’t hold on to the previous week or even the previous day.”

Reece, who does have a frame of reference on recent ugly Raiders history, just feels something different about this 2015 club, however. They get along. They care about each other, and they have bought in to the tough-love, stay-the-course, get-better-each-day approach Del Rio has tried to instill. Clearly, an esprit de corps is developing that simply hasn’t been there the past three seasons.

“It’s us, it’s our personality, we’re close-knit,” Reece said. “It’s hard to believe a team so new could be so close-knit, but we are. Everything just seems to fit together, along with the coaching staff.”

Reece also acknowledges that there is considerably more talent, particularly on offense.

“There’s so much more than we do, we can be so much more explosive,” he said. “We have so many more weapons now. We haven’t hit on all cylinders, but it’s going to be special when it happens.”

For now, though, Reece would simply settle for another happy plane ride.

For more on the Raiders, visit the Inside the Oakland Raiders blog at ibabuzz.com/oaklandraiders. Follow Carl Steward on Twitter at twitter.com/stewardsfolly.