The Raiders wrapped up their first full-team training camp practice on Wednesday, and one rookie seems to be turning a few heads already.
During his post-practice show, longtime Raiders radio host ‘JT The Brick’ said one of his biggest takeaways of the day wasn’t necessarily Fernando Mendoza, Ashton Jeanty or Maxx Crosby.
It was rookie cornerback Hezekiah Masses.
Masses has been a popular name since arriving in Las Vegas by way of the fifth round of the draft, and his first impressions at training camp on Wednesday haven’t slowed down the hype.
JT couldn’t hide his excitement after watching the Masses work with the first-team defense and said the 6’1, 185-pound rookie already looks like a prototype NFL cornerback.
“My takeaway from today was the secondary. When they got into drill and they were going after each other, offense versus defense, I kept an eye on who was out there. [Eric] Stokes was out there. And then I look over and I see Hezekiah Masses running with the ones… and he was good,” JT said on his Raider Nation Radio show.
“That guy looks store bought and ready to go. That guy looks like you went to a cornerback store and picked him out from behind the glass and said, ‘Go out and play.’ I’m excited to see him play more.”
Raiders hope to see physicality from Masses
It will be interesting to see how Masses performs in the next few weeks because the knock on him coming out of college was that he sometimes lacked physicality.
Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter talked about Masses in June and said he was hearing “more and more” good things about Masses and called the former University of California cornerback one of the Raiders’ biggest surprises of the offseason.
“None of what he does matters if it doesn’t translate into pads, but [Masses] was one of the biggest surprises coming out of mandatory minicamp.” Carpenter said on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast.
“If the way he played in the offseason translates into pads, because remembers, that was his biggest criticism, was his ability to finish tackles, if it translates, [he] could be the absolute steal of the draft.”
x: @raidersbeat