Brock Bowers is expected to be in the Raiders’ lineup on Sunday and based on everything that has been reported over the last few months, Klint Kubiak’s offense is going to lean heavily Bowers when he is back to full strength.
Last month, David Carr said he watched the Raiders practice and hinted that Kubiak is going to be uniquely creative in how he deploys Bowers. On the same show, Derek Carr said he believes Bowers will be the primary receiver on up to 90 percent of Kubiak’s pass plays.
“I’ve talked a lot about Bowers being used like JSN,” Derek Carr said on the Home Grown with David & Derek Carr podcast earlier this month.
“To me what does that look like? To me, when we get our plays, you get the playbook and you get your gameplan, there’s little 1’s, 2’s and 3’s written on these guys’ heads. And it’s who’s first in the read, second in the read, third in the read, and there’s some much more that goes into that, this is just the simple way of saying it.”
“Now schematically, [Andrew] Janocko and Klint are trying to figure out the best way for 1, 2 and 3 to be open… now, what does that look like? Bowers, I would assume, in 90 percent of these plays is no. 1, and if he’s not 1 and he’s 2 or 3, that’s just trying to save the system or the scheme of ‘Where’s Brock? His eyes are starting there.’”
For obvious reasons, no one is going to talk about what they have seen the Raiders do with Bowers at practice, and Raider Nation Radio host Q Myers was the latest to make a big statement (albeit still vague) about Bowers at practice.
“I can tell you from being at practice throughout the course of training camp how explosive [Bowers] can be in this offense in particular,” Myers said on the Locked on Raiders Squad Show.
“We’ve seen him before in other offenses. We know how good skill set wise [he is], but in this offense in particular, Brock Bowers can break records. I’m just going to throw it out there. Now I don’t know what that means now that he’s missed a couple games, but honestly in this offense, the way that they plan on using him, I’m not going to come on here and talk about scheme and plays, that’s just not what I’m going to do. But I’ll tell you when you see him out there operating in this offense, you’re going to be blown away as long as he’s 100 percent healthy.”
On Sunday, it will be interesting to see how Bowers’ knee has progressed, and if he close to full strength, it sounds like Kubiak has plans to use him against the Saints in ways we haven’t seen before.
x: @raidersbeat