Brock Bowers made his season debut against the New Orleans Saints on Sunday afternoon, and the league’s top tight end did not disappoint.
Much had been made in recent weeks about how Raiders head coach Klint Kubiak was planning to deploy Bowers, and listening to reports from practices it sounded like Bowers might be playing just about everywhere on offense.
“I can tell you from being at practice throughout the course of training camp how explosive [Bowers] can be in this offense in particular,” flagship radio host Q Myers said on the Locked on Raiders Squad Show last week.
“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.”
Bowers didn’t play every position on Sunday, but what did happen is he spent the majority of the game lining up as a wide receiver.
“Bowers is a receiver. I don’t care what the official designation of that kind of deal is,” the California Post’s Vinny Bonsignore said on Raider Nation Radio’s Morning Tailgate on Monday. “He is, and I’m writing right now, he’s not just rapidly becoming one of one among tight ends. He’s one of the most feared weapons in the NFL.”
ESPN’s Benjamin Zolak shared a similar sentiment in a column after the game and added a few advanced statistics for context.
“Bowers… was used exactly as I hoped he might be in Kubiak’s offense,” Zolak wrote on Sunday night. “24 of his 33 routes were in the slot or out wide, and all of his targets came from those alignments. This is a wide receiver masquerading as a tight end.”
“Bowers made his season debut with an absolute bang: 10 catches, 116 yards and a score. Since entering the league in 2024, Bowers has played 30 games, and he has four games of 10-plus receptions, 100-plus yards and at least one touchdown. The rest of the league’s entire wealth of tight ends has only four such games in the same timespan.”
And last, but not least… CBS Sports analyst Mike Renner shared a tweet on Monday explaining how the Raiders are creating mismatches by moving Bowers around in the formation.
Raiders deploying Michael Mayer as “true” tight end?
Maybe the Raiders were just trying to limit Bowers in his first game back from knee surgery, but the way it played out against the Saints is that Michael Mayer (61) ended up getting more snaps than Bowers (55), according to Pro Football Focus.
Essentially, Mayer has become the tight end in Kubiak’s offense and Bowers is the Raiders’ version of Jaxon Smith-Njigba in Kubiak’s offense of a year ago.
The Saints had no answer for Bowers on Sunday, and it will be interesting to see how the Chiefs defend him in week 4.
Former Raiders OC compared Bowers to star WR…
Scott Turner was the pass game coordinator and interim offensive coordinator in Las Vegas during Bowers’ record-breaking rookie season, and Turner said in the offseason that Bowers might actually be more explosive than Falcons wide receiver Drake London.
“Day to day, his understanding, everything about the game just comes really easily to him. You correct him on a technique; he’ll never make the same mistake twice. He sees the big picture, so you can line him up in any different spot on offense, and he’s going to be able to do it,” Turner said on the Just Win podcast in July.
“I think if he just played receiver, if he wasn’t a tight end, if he played receiver, I think he’d be very similar to Drake London in Atlanta… And he’s actually probably a little more juice than him, like as far as his explosiveness and speed.”
x: @raidersbeat