The Raiders got a pleasant surprise on Thursday when Georgia tight end Brock Bowers fell to them in the first round.
Not many mock drafts had Bowers falling out of the top 10, but with six quarterbacks taken within the first 12 picks, the Raiders found themselves in a position at pick 13 that no one was expecting.
Tight end wasn’t a position of need, but every indication is that there wasn’t any hesitation by the Raiders to take Bowers, who has been rumored to be one of the top five players on their draft board.
But what would the Raiders have done with pick 13 if Bowers wasn’t available?
Sports Illustated insider Hondo Carpenter talked about that possibility last week.
“They loved [Joe] Alt,” Carpenter said on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast. “They didn’t think there was a chance they were going to get Alt, and they loved [Taliese] Fuaga. I believed, and I believe it was the feeling in the building, that they were going to end up [drafting] Fuaga.”
Fuaga ended up being drafted by the Saints with the 14th pick and time will tell which team got the better player. The Raiders still have a relative need at right tackle, but the hope is that either Thayer Munford Jr. or third-round pick D.J. Glaze will seize the job in the months ahead.
GM Tom Telesco now has his first draft with the Raiders in the books and there’s no question that his approach was different from what the team has experienced in the past.
Unlike Jon Gruden and even the Patriot men previously in the building, Telesco didn’t draft for need until the later rounds and reserved his first-round pick for the best player available on his draft board.
If all goes as planned, Bowers will be the next great tight end in the league and the Telesco will find a way to successfully navigate the situation at right tackle.
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