A year ago next month, Brock Bowers came out of the University of Georgia as one of the best tight end prospects to ever enter the NFL draft. He fell to the Raiders with the no. 13 pick and after one season in the NFL, Bowers is already considered one of the best tight ends in the league.
Bowers took the league by storm in his rookie year and the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Vinny Bonsignore talked this week about one of the details that stood out to him about Bowers in his first NFL season.
“What’s funny about him is, if you watched him in the locker room, that dude was always headed somewhere to do something to keep his body right. He always had his power drink, and he was getting his massage, he was doing his lifting, he was doing this, he was doing that, and then he would come in, we would talk to him really quick, and he’s off to somewhere else,” Bonsignore said on Raider Nation Radio’s Morning Tailgate.
Bonsignore said Bowers’ presence has been felt in Las Vegas since joining the Raiders, but he also believes the University of Georgia has missed their star tight end in more ways than just his production on the field.
UGA head coach Kirby Smart made a few notable comments about the effort of his team in recent days and Bonsignore believes Bowers was a big part of changing the culture at Georgia during their back-to-back championship runs – an element that has been missed at Georgia since he left for the NFL.
“I heard Kirby Smart the other day just bemoaning the shape that his team was in and the work ethic of his team,” Bonsignore said. “It’s so interesting because he credits and the other coaches on the Georgia football team credit Brock for changing that in the right way when he was there. He was a guy that other players initially were snickering at and kind of upset with because from day one that he stepped on the field, everything was an Olympic rep. You know, he was competing as if the gold medal was on the line.
“Some of the guys were like, ‘Who’s this freaking dude from California coming up trying to show everybody up?’ And then they actually saw him play and they’re like, ‘Oh. Okay. So that’s how you have to do.’ And so, he changed the culture and the work ethic in a massive way, and they had… the greatest success in school history… during his time there. And now to see that there’s a little bit of a fall off, you remove somebody like that and all of a sudden, maybe the standard goes down just a little bit because you don’t have that lead dog that’s leading the way.”
Despite playing with three different quarterbacks in his first NFL season, Raiders’ tight end Brock Bowers is second in the NFL in receptions (87), behind only Ja’Marr Chase (93) with four weeks remaining in the season.
In most years, Bowers would be the front-runner for the league’s Offensive Rookie of the Year honor, but quarterbacks tend to get preference with the award and Washington quarterback Jayden Daniels has given the league some of the biggest highlights of the season. The Commanders are also more relevant than the Raiders in 2024.
Bleacher Report’s James Palmer, formerly with NFL Media, was making the case for Bowers to win the Offensive Rookie of the Year award in December and shared what he had been hearing about Bowers over the course of the season.
“I’m doing a little piece on the rookie pass catchers and getting their grades… It’s supposed to be the rookie receiver class, and everyone I talk to from coaches, GMs, executives, everybody just goes ‘Well, the best pass catcher is Brock Bowers and it’s not even close.’” Palmer said near the end of the season.
“I think we know that from the stats. [Bowers] should be rookie of the year, it’s a quarterback league and probably a quarterback wins it, but he should win rookie of the year. What other teams that have gone against Brock Bowers are saying about him is unbelievable. You don’t talk about rookie players like this very often…”
“I did the Chiefs-Chargers game, they have [both] played him,” Palmer continued.
“Talking to guys on those staffs, they’re like, ‘His ability to use leverage, use his body, leverage within a route, box out defenders, get the football anywhere on the field… some of the IQ stuff he has is what a tight end uses in year 7, year 8, and he’s a rookie.’ I had a coach on one of those two teams tell me there’s only one player in the league that can guard him. That’s it, and it’s Patrick Surtain of the Broncos because he has the size, he has the length, he has the athleticism. They were like ‘Nobody else can stay with him. He is already making a case to be the best tight end in football.’”
x: @raidersbeat
I will admit that I was surprised and, at first, disappointed when Telesco selected a TD instead of an OT. Great pick by the GM, he absolutely hit it out of the park, but we still need OL help! Our season went down the tubes partly bc of the poor talent along the OL. Hopefully they address that in next month’s draft. A strong OL makes all the offensive skill positions better.
Pick jeanty at 6. This is also a generational talent. He was so close to beating Barry Sanders record. Round 2 offensive line round 3 milroe or Howard. Round 4 offensive line. Round 5 Woodard linebacker from UNLV. Rounds 6&7 4 picks. You make the call.