As the Raiders await the start of the 2020 season, fans of the Silver & Black hope Jon Gruden’s club has turned a corner after improving by three wins from 2018 to 2019 — with the best yet to come in the team’s first year in Las Vegas. Clearly, the Raiders of today must compete with the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC West, as well as their other longtime rivals, the Denver Broncos and Los…
Two of the biggest names in the Las Vegas Raiders’ 2020 draft class were clearly proud of their heritage — Henry Ruggs III and Lynn Bowden Jr. But, despite their generational suffixes, Ruggs and Bowden won’t be adding their names to one of the team’s most exclusive clubs anytime soon: those Raiders who have truly epitomized the word “family.” Among the team’s quirky personnel traditions — including signing castoff first-round draft picks (see “Mariota, Marcus”) or taking a chance on…
The offseason addition of quarterback Marcus Mariota provides the Las Vegas Raiders with the latest chapter in a time-honored franchise tradition: Employing Heisman Trophy winners. Mariota won the award as college’s best player in 2014, shortly before becoming the second overall pick in the 2015 NFL Draft by the Tennessee Titans. He joined the Raiders this spring, under a two-year contract to ostensibly replace a rogue’s gallery of 2019 mediocrities as the backup to quarterback Derek Carr. Once NFL football…
These are strange times, in the Raider Nation and across the globe, as we grapple with the coronavirus, which has shut down professional sports — including spring football — and many other aspects of “normal” life. So, even as we await a scaled-down 2020 NFL Draft in the Raiders’ new home of Las Vegas, it seems like as good a time as any to discuss one of the NFL’s stranger draft footnotes: the Supplemental Draft. The annual Supplemental Draft is…
Coming off a 7-9 season in 2019, the Las Vegas Raiders will choose 12th overall in the 2020 NFL Draft — as well as 19th overall, courtesy of the Chicago Bears. Since the draft is conducted in reverse order of the previous season’s finish, the 2020 pick certainly represents an improvement over the 2019 NFL Draft, when the Raiders’ 4-12 record in 2018 “won” them the fourth overall selection. Until recent years, however, the Raiders have been strangers to the…
As the Raider Nation sits out another Super Bowl weekend, hopes for next season include the possibilities for the newly minted Las Vegas Raiders’ two first-round draft picks in April — which will be made on the team’s new home turf, no less. The Raiders are currently slated to pick 12th and 19th overall, with the latter pick coming from the Chicago Bears as part of the 2018 Khalil Mack trade. Raiders fans could be forgiven for feeling like multiple…
With their first major transaction as the newly minted Las Vegas Raiders in January 2020, the Silver & Black signed cornerback Nevin Lawson to a one-year contract extension. Lawson, who was coming off a one-year free agent contract, played in 11 games with five starts for the Raiders in 2019 — after missing the first four games due to a failed drug test. He’ll actually start his second season with the Raiders on the suspended list, too, earning a one-game…
When Jon Gruden and the Raiders traded star defensive end Khalil Mack to the Chicago Bears in 2018, it left the Raider Nation stunned. Mack, who was able to stuff the run at DE and rush the passer to devastating effect at DE and outside linebacker, had quickly become one of the most highly decorated defenders in Raiders history — including once earning first-team All-Pro honors at both DE and OLB in the same year. But questions about his upcoming…
As the 2019 NFL season winds down and the Raiders begin the process of their move to Las Vegas for the 2020 season, talk in the Raider Nation has (unfortunately) once again turned to the NFL Draft. Despite a bounce-back from 4-12 in 2018 to 7-9 in 2019 that saw them in contention for the postseason into the final week of the season, the Raiders missed out on the playoffs for the 16th time in 17 years. And, as it…