Through free agency and the draft, the Raiders have invested heavily in their offensive line in the last few months, and for that reason some have thrown around the idea that Jackson Powers-Johnson might be on the trade block.
Powers-Johnson didn’t mesh well with the organization a year ago, but it has never confirmed what really happened.
With a new coaching staff in the building will Powers-Johnson get a fresh start, or will the deck continue to be stacked against the JPJ in his third year?
Lincoln Kennedy talked about the Powers-Johnson trade rumors on his podcast this week, and the former Raider great offered a strong opinion on how the team needs to handle Powers-Johnson moving forward.
“What are you going to get for JPJ? He’s often injured or concussed. Are you going to get a six pack of Heineken and a pack of Trident gum,” Kennedy said on the Locked on Raiders Squad Show podcast.
“It doesn’t even make sense to even throw the word ‘trade’ out there. There’s no team that’s going to take a chance on a player who can’t stay on the field. You saw the Maxx Crosby deal fall apart because [the Raiders] had their… regrets for making the deal as big as they made it, but more importantly, there’s an unproven guy coming off of surgery. You don’t know what you have in JPJ. That’s the first point.”
“Second point is stop giving away good players. Stop letting good players go. Potentially, I see what JPJ can be. He’s the most tenacious offensive lineman that we have right now… Stop giving away good players. Stop using good players to try to build for the future. The future starts right now.
Find a way to get his *** on the football field, find a way to keep his *** on the football field, and let him go out there and play.”
Was it Pete Carroll who took issue with Powers-Johnson or someone in the building above the head coach?
Based on an ESPN report in January, it sounds like it may have been John Spytek who shut down trade conversations around Powers-Johnson.
According to ESPN’s Kalyn Kahler and Ryan McFadden, the Raiders’ coaching staff and front office (presumably Spytek) weren’t on the same page with what to do with Powers-Johnson.
“An executive for another NFL club said his team was interested in trading for Powers-Johnson, a second-year player who was drafted by the previous regime. He wondered why the Raiders coaching staff wasn’t playing the young player with potential at center and had moved him to guard. When his club’s trade efforts were rejected, the executive said it was clear to him that Vegas’ coaching staff and front office were on different pages,” the ESPN report said.
“‘Spytek knows that he has a pretty young, talented interior lineman,’ the executive said. ‘They are not where they want to be in that position group, but they didn’t come close to maximizing it. They actually have some good young players, and they should have been more functional.’”
There were hints early in the year that the coaching staff had something against Powers-Johnson.
In the first month of the season, the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Vinny Bonsignore was the first to describe Powers-Johnson as being “singled out” by the coaching staff.
“I did talk to Jackson Powers-Johnson, got a chance to talk to Jackson today. He hasn’t gotten any feedback on why he’s in the situation that he’s in,” Bonsignore said on the Vegas Nation First and 10 podcast in September.
“We all know that he’s been, I guess, singled out… from center, compete for the center job. Nope, we’re going to go with Jordan Meredith. Now you’re going to go over to right guard to compete with Alex Cappa, a competition that Pete Carroll has maintained continues. I mean, those are his words. That’s not happening at left tackle. That’s not happening at left guard. It’s not happening at right tackle.”
“It’s basically Jackson Powers-Johnson who’s been identified as somebody that needs to keep fighting for his job and fighting for playing time,” Bonsignore continued. He has not gotten any feedback from his words to me about why that is, and all he could do is keep putting his best foot forward. He’s open to playing guard, center, defensive line… I would not say that he was happy about it. I could tell. I’ve been doing this a long time.”
x: @raidersbeat