Would the Raiders have drafted Montez Sweat if the Redskins had not traded in front of them?
Jay Gruden, the brother of Jon Gruden, may have thought so, but according to NBC Sports’ Peter King, the Raiders had been set for a while on drafting Josh Jacobs and Johnathan Abram with their final two picks in the first round.
This was King’s explanation of how the Raiders draft room unfolded in the time between picking Jacobs and hoping Abram would fall to them:
“I want you to look at Josh Jacobs and Johnathan Abram. For a month, the Oakland Raiders have focused almost solely on getting those two guys with their second two picks in the first round, but Mike Mayock was convinced and convinced Jon Gruden ‘we are not giving up draft capital’ to go chase these guys. Trust our boad, trust what we know about the other teams around us, and we know that we’re going to get those two guys.
Now it got real hairy because Philadelphia traded up ahead of them, as I wrote in my column. They got very nervous that the Eagles, who loved Josh Jacobs, were going up to get him, but they didn’t.
And just a quick little note that I found very interesting. Right after they take Josh Jacobs, there’s euphoria in the room and now they’re focused on Abram because that’s the 24th pick, now at 27 they have to wait for two more teams to pick and make sure they still get this safety from Mississippi State, Johnathan Abram, and they wait a second and all of a sudden Mayock starts thinking ‘man, do I want to I want to use a [fifth-round pick] to go trade with Baltimore at 25 ensure we get our guy.’
And Gruden is like ‘Do it! Do it! Do it!’
But Mayock said ‘no, we’re going to trust where we are. We’re going to trust our process.'”
Safe to say, Mayock has earned the respect of Gruden and for what it’s worth… the fifth-round pick the Raiders would have lost to Baltimore by trading up ended up being Hunter Renfrow.
twitter: @raidersbeat
Wow ! Love the direction the Raiders are going . Mayock can get the guys and Coach Gruden can get them to play