We’re officially at the midpoint of the NFL offseason, but talk around the league, and particularly the Raiders, never stops.
Let’s take a look a few rumors and storylines around the Raiders as the team prepares to enter Antonio Pierce’s first full season as head coach the of the team.
Will the Raiders make another move at cornerback?
Raiders GM Tom Telesco addressed that topic not long after the draft and he made it clear that the Raiders aren’t done shopping for cornerbacks… and won’t be anytime soon.
“The philosophy is always that you can never have enough corners,” Telesco said on the JT the Brick Show. “It’s a passing league which means you got to be able to cover and corners are hard to find. Once the season starts, if you have injuries at that position, it’s a very difficult position to add in season, someone that can come in and really play at a high level for you. You can never have enough of them. I learned that early from Bill Polian early on.”
“We’ll keep looking between now and training camp because we’d like to try and make that the deepest group possible so that we can weather the storm which usually comes at some point during the year.”
Seventh-round pick one of the steals of the draft?
Air Force safety Trey Taylor was a popular name prior to the draft, but he was surprisingly still on the board in the seventh round.
“[The Raiders] had a significantly higher grade on him than seventh round,” Raiders insider Hondo Carpenter said of former Air Force safety Trey Taylor, who the Raiders drafted with their first of two picks in the seventh round.
Hondo went on to call Taylor one of the “steals of the draft” and implied in another segment that several teams had high draft grades on Taylor, but drafted positions of need instead.
On separate episodes of his daily podcast, Hondo shared three other notable statements…
Sixth-round pick Dylan Laube draws comparison to one of the league’s great running backs
“Someone in the Raiders organization said to me… that Laube reminds them of little Joe Morris,” Hondo said this week on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast.
Morris played for the New York Giants in the 1980’s and was a smaller running back even by modern NFL running back standards. At 5’7, 195 pounds, Morris led the NFL with 21 rushing touchdowns in 1985 and was second in the league in rushing yards (1,516) in 1986.
Did Josh Jacobs show up to the team last year out of shape?
There have been different rumors and stories on this topic, but it sounds like there were definitely people within the organization that believed he wasn’t in great shape at the start of the 2023 season.
“This is a factual statement. There were several people in the [Raiders] building very disappointed last year when Josh Jacobs arrived,” Hondo said on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast. “They did not feel like Josh was in tip-top ready to go shape. I am sure that Josh would disagree with that… and I think that hurt Josh a lot.”
It’s water under the bridge now, but the departure of Jacobs was definitely awkward. There’s more to the story about his departure and depending on who you talk to, the stories sound nothing alike.
Which player or coach has the most pressure on them going into the season?
Everyone is looking at the quarterbacks, but first-year offensive coordinator Luke Getsy has one of the biggest challenges in the building going into the season.
It’s no secret that Getsy wasn’t the team’s first choice to be their next offensive coordinator, and it’s not like he’s walking into a dream situation. The Raiders are one of the few teams entering the 2024 season without knowing their starting quarterback and they also don’t have an established right tackle on the roster.
There are plenty of offensive weapons on the Raiders roster and for that reason there might not be a lot of patience among Raider fans if they get off to a slow start offensively.
As for which player has the most pressure… that would have to be Aidan O’Connell or Gardner Minshew. And the coaching staff would do themselves a huge favor by choosing the right quarterback out of the gate.
Chiefs getting tired of Travis Kelce’s act?
Take these quotes from Hondo and do with them what you will…
“I think his act is wearing thin with a lot of people… and the most important people in his locker room. I think there’s a lot of people that that’s wearing thin with and that’s my opinion based on some things I’ll get into later as we get closer to the season…”
“I don’t care about the Taylor Swift stuff. He can date whoever he wants. That’s irrelevant to me. I understand it’s important to other people… I care strictly about the football and I’m getting some interesting information that I think his act may be wearing very thin with his team.”
For the most part, Kelce’s off-field decisions haven’t been considered a distraction, but it does sound like he’s starting to wear on some of the important people in the Chiefs’ building.
Wonder who those people might be?
x: @raidersbeat