The Raiders made one of the most intriguing moves of the 2026 draft when they traded up and selected Jermod McCoy with the first pick of the fourth round.
If not for a knee injury he suffered 15 months ago, McCoy probably would have been a top 15 pick in the 2026 draft. But with news that McCoy underwent an osteochondral graft to rebuild bone and cartilage in his knee, the Tennessee cornerback’s draft stock plummeted to Day 3 of the draft.
The Raiders viewed McCoy as a reasonable risk at the top of the fourth round and now the team’s medical staff will do everything in their power to prolong McCoy’s career.
Nothing concrete has been reported on the specifics of McCoy’s prognosis, but former Raiders offensive lineman Marshall Newhouse shared what he was hearing earlier in the week.
“This is that balance of risk and reward. I’ve heard that he’s healed from the ACL. He could play this year,” Newhouse said on the Just Win podcast.
“The question is if he’s going to need another additional procedure that the rehab is 12 to 14 months and then there’s like a 20 percent chance, we won’t turn in the doctors here on that procedure… not working out. And so that’s a very big risk but one that you take with the 101st pick. So it’s interesting. Time absolutely will tell on this one.”
Newhouse made it clear he wasn’t reporting on the situation, but if McCoy’s chances of extending his NFL career are anywhere close to 80 percent, the Raiders should feel good about where they drafted him.
The high reward potential was worth the relatively low risk.
The other encouraging detail from what Newhouse said is that sounds like McCoy is going into his rookie year feeling pretty good. The hope would be that he isn’t limited by his knee or experience a setback when he gets back on the field.
x: @raidersbeat
I actually had that same knee surgery…the ‘OATS’ procedure…and brother, let me tell you – it suuuuuuucks! But I’ll admit, my knee is better off for it. I had a ‘donor’ bone plug inserted. Basically they drill out the bone where there is no cartilage (I don’t know exactly how deep, but say an inch or so), find a recently deceased donor that matches your same bone curvature and all that and core-out a ‘plug’ to hammer into the hole in your knee. The plug is slightly larger (like, a mm or something), so the doc literally hammers it in.
The whole thing is to replace missing cartilage that has been scraped of or damaged….they cannot grow cartilage on bare bone, but bone will fuse to bone (even if it’s someone else’s bone), if that all makes sense.
Most knee surgeries (outside of replacement, which this is probably closest to as far as the flailing the doc is giving you), they’ll get you into PT as soon as possible – sometimes within a few days. With this, you have to wait 4-6 weeks before you can put any weight or stress on it so that the bones have time to fuse together. Consequently, by delaying PT/rehab, the recovery time is extended exponentially. The only thing you can really do is flexion/extension exercises (which you BETTER do!!)
My surgery was done along with an ACL replacement….I missed a month of work, and that’s with a desk job.
Worst case – So imagine the precision required to hammer that bone ‘plug’ into the hole in the knee….the curvature of the plug needs to align EXACTLY with the curvature of your knee – if he did anything to disturb that, he’s going to have big problems. Imagine if the plug got driven in too far (which is the likely scenario I’m painting). If they got to go in there and fix THAT, he’s in trouble.
Now, if they’re saying he might need another plug to replace some more cartilage in another spot or something, then he’s maybe ok (for now). That is then more of a pain-tolerance kind of thing, and then some early-onset arthritis in the future….but the arthritis might not set in for 10 years or something though (it all depends on the severity – looking glass half-full here).
Anyway, just thought I’d share…..