Raiders Great Lincoln Kennedy Says He’d Give an “Entire Draft Class” to See the Team Address No. 1 Need

After a historically embarrassing loss to the Chiefs on Sunday, the Raiders seem to have reached a new low.

Offensively, the Raiders were as bad in week 7 as any team has been all year, and the offense under offensive coordinator Chip Kelly has been borderline incompetent all season.

Going forward, the Raiders need to figure out if Kelly and Geno Smith are a good fit for the future and if one (or both) need to be replaced. The fan base will want to see the Raiders make an aggressive move for a quarterback in the draft, but former Raiders’ O-lineman Lincoln Kennedy believes there is another area on the roster that needs attention first.

“I’m sorry… I’m still of the mindset that this team needs to find an offensive line. If they have to trade their entire d— draft class for an offensive line, please do. I am so tired of seeing a porous offensive line for the Raiders, especially [at] the position that I represent at tackle,” Kennedy said on the Locked on Raiders Squad Show podcast.

“It is horrible. You’ve got to address this issue. It’s long overdue. I don’t care who you put back there at quarterback, running back. If you don’t have an offensive line, you’re not worth a d—.”

Unfortunately for the decision makers in Las Vegas, it’s going to be hard to evaluate the quarterbacks and offensive line this year because the consensus seems to be that Kelly has been a terrible fit for the offense.

In fact, some would argue that Kelly is a terrible fit for the NFL.

Former Commanders tight end Logan Paulsen made a few comments in September that have seemingly become more accurate in the weeks since.

Paulson was critical of Kelly’s offensive scheme and detailed a few reasons why he thought it had not been working going into the Raiders’ week 3 game against the Commanders.

Paulsen believes Chip Kelly’s offense is not as effective because of the NFL’s wider hash marks

“This is going to sound mean, but I don’t mean it to be in a mean way. This is like, it feels like a very collegey offense,” Paulsen said on the Take Command podcast. “It’s the spacing, the formations, the distribution, all feels very ‘collegy.’”

“One of the things in college is like you have these wider hash marks. You have these wider hash marks. When you run your RPOs, when you run your little bubble screen… when you run that seam that gets picked off against the Chargers… That works when you’re in college, when you’re on the left hash and the safety has to cover all this ground to get over top of the three-receiver set,” Paulson continued.

“Here, because of the hash marks, the safeties have to cover less ground, the linebackers don’t have to displace as far for the RPO… In college, that works really well because that guy’s displaced like four yards farther than he is in the NFL. You’re running and then that guy’s unblocked and he ends up making the tackle because not only is he closer, but guys in the NFL, linebackers specifically, secondary players, strong safeties, hook players are way, way faster. I do think there’s this simplistic element to the run game.”

Paulsen said Chip Kelly’s offense doesn’t create good angles with formations

“You look at really well-designed run games in the NFL [and] I think you look at Green Bay, you look at San Francisco as a good example. Baltimore does a great job in terms of creating good angles with formation, with receivers. There’s not a lot of that going on [with the Raiders],” Paulsen said.

“You can tell that Chip Kelly really wants to rely on the RPO to create and distribute the field and create space, but it’s not distributing the same way that it was when he was at Ohio State last year. I think you get some really tough matchups in the run game in terms of angles on combinations, and you get a lot of free runners because you’re not getting the same displacement because RPO. As a result, Ashton Jeanty is getting hit in the backfield a lot.”

Paulsen said Kelly’s route distributions feel like “college stuff”

“Even on the route distributions and stuff, it’s very vertical into the defense. There’s not a lot of cross releases [in the Raiders’ offense]. The timing and the spacing, it feels like college stuff in the sense where you don’t get like these spray releases. You’re not stressing hook players. It’s vertical, get to your spot,” Paulson said.

“And again, in college, it works because you have five more yards of grass that the defense has to defend over there. Here, the throwing windows are so much tighter.”

Paulsen, at the time, thought Kelly would eventually “figure it out”

“I think Chip Kelly will figure it out at some point. I think they’ll find a way to get a little bit more nuanced, a little bit more varied in terms of the run game that they’re calling, how they get to some of their past concepts, how they distribute the RPO stuff… but right now, man, it’s tough,” Paulson said.

“It’s tough for the backs to find a lot of air. Because like I said, it’s not only the RPO stuff doesn’t have a lot of grass. It’s the combinations on the offensive line. When you get in these wider splits from the offensive linemen, the receivers can’t really get into the blocking surface the same way.”

“They do have plays where the receivers get into the blocking surface. But now, if I’m running duo, the combination is really vertical. Those vertical combinations in the NFL are really, really hard. You’re not at Ohio State anymore where the guys you have are just better than the people across from you. You need to figure out ways to create angles, to create matchups. And right now, he’s not doing that.”

It’s now a month later, and it appears Kelly has not figured out much. If anything, the offense seems to be getting worse.

x: @raidersbeat