The latest twist to a forgettable 2024 season for the Raiders was the arrest of defensive end Charles Snowden and subsequent DUI charge associated with an incident where he was found passed out behind the wheel of a Jeep Cherokee.
According to the Associated Press, blood tests revealed Snowden’s blood-alcohol content to be about .19%, which is more than twice the legal limit in Nevada.
For the sake of comparison, former Raiders wide receiver Henry Ruggs had a blood-alcohol level of 0.16 percent at the time of the fatal crash that killed 23-year-old Tina Tintor in 2021.
Snowden was reportedly unable to stand on his own at the time of his arrest, but more than a week after the incident, he remains on the Raiders’ roster.
The Raiders haven’t outlined their plans for Snowden, who is currently on a one-year deal with the team, but the fact that he remains on the roster in the final weeks of a 2-12 season is difficult to ignore.
“I am not a person who’s willing to throw away a kid for a mistake. Okay? But we also need to understand he got behind a wheel and very well could have killed someone,” Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter said this week on the Las Vegas Raiders insider podcast. “Good kids make bad mistakes all the time [but] I’m going to be blunt with you. I am a little bit surprised that he’s still on the team.”
Maybe the Raiders want to allow the legal process to play out, but it’s hard to argue that they have a “zero tolerance” policy in place based on the details that we have to this point.
Looking back to two years ago, it was the Raiders’ zero-tolerance approach with Jalen Carter that led them to pass on the best defensive player in the 2023 draft.
In March of 2023, The Athletic’s Vic Tafur reported that Carter had been “crossed off” by the Raiders due to his proximity (he was reportedly racing a car being operated by an intoxicated driver) to a deadly crash in 2023.
“Carter is not an option for the Raiders at No. 7, having already been crossed off by the team, according to a league source. Carter had been charged with the two misdemeanors on March 1 after a police investigation concluded that Carter had been racing the car driven by Georgia recruiting analyst Chandler LeCroy on the morning of Jan. 15. LeCroy’s car crashed, resulting in her death and the death of passenger Devin Willock, a Georgia offensive lineman.
Carter was sentenced to one year of probation, a $1,000 fine and 80 hours of community service following his plea. While the cases are not the same, the comparison is too close to home for the Raiders and their fans in the Las Vegas community following the 2021 arrest of former receiver Henry Ruggs.”
Carter was not charged with any alcohol-related crimes and his agent confirmed that detail in a statement released not long after the accident…
“If there had been any suspicion that Mr. Carter had consumed alcohol or used an illegal substance when Athens-Clarke County police officers and investigators spoke to him at the scene, following the accident, they would have arrested him for DUI.”
Nevertheless, the Raiders didn’t feel they were in a position to draft Carter.
They passed on Carter for Tyree Wilson and the Eagles traded up to take Carter with the ninth-overall pick – two positions behind the Raiders.
It was a strong statement the Raiders made on Carter, who is considered one of the best interior defensive linemen in the NFL in just his second season, and after the Ruggs incident it isn’t hard to see why the team took the position that they did.
That being the case, Carter wasn’t responsible for taking anyone’s life and neither is Charles Snowden.
And those details beg a simple question…
Does is make sense that the Raiders weren’t willing to draft the most dynamic defensive player in the 2023 draft over an alcohol-related incident, but are standing by Snowden in the final weeks of a one-year deal in a season that’s been circling the drain for more than a month?
x: @raidersbeat
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