It can be fun to tally up the youngest talent in the league each season. Mostly because usually that only consists of players in their first three years in the league, so there is annual turnover. And if you rank the teams, instead of just the individuals, it can be a useful check-up on how your team has been doing with drafting for the future.
Last year the Raiders came in at 14th in Football Outsiders’ ranking of top under-25 teams. This year, they came in at 16th, as tallied up by ESPN.
The Raiders are the Giants Lite, with GM Mike Mayock and head coach Jon Gruden making odd picks at the top of the past two drafts that so far haven’t dramatically hurt their under-25 rankings because of their volume. Last year’s top pick Clelin Ferrell had a modest rookie season with 17 hurries, 12 fewer than the next pass-rusher off the board and many analysts’ preferred choice, Josh Allen. The team’s second Round 1 pick Josh Jacobs was more successful. His 26.0% broken tackle rate was the second-highest of backs with 150 or more touches. It’s just that even talented running backs might not warrant first-round draft picks. Their final 2019 first-round pick, safety Johnathan Abram, had worse luck. He tore his rotator cuff in the team’s season opener and landed on injured reserve. Still, he’s a likely 2020 starter. And the team’s two 2020 first-round picks, wide receiver Henry Ruggs III and cornerback Damon Arnette, were reaches at their positions according to numerous scouts. Ruggs finished fourth and well behind presumed top two receiver prospects CeeDee Lamb and Jerry Jeudy in Playmaker Score, and Arnette’s 4.56-second 40 time suggests he might struggle to hang with the game’s best deep targets.
For all the negatives, Mayock and Gruden deserve credit for their talent evaluation in the later rounds. With 35 hurries and 10 sacks, fourth-round defensive end Maxx Crosby was way more productive in his rookie season than his first-round counterpart Ferrell. Hunter Renfrow and Foster Moreau were Day 3 selections who showed tremendous efficiencies of 7.9% and 29.6% DVOA on a limited number of targets as rookies. Their low 7.2-yard and 4.6-yard average depths of target suggest specialized roles even if the team eventually moves on from veteran checkdown artist Derek Carr, but that won’t make them poor values for their draft capital. Adding those late-round gems to young, early-round talent that also includes left tackle Kolton Miller (3.0% blown block rate) and cornerback Trayvon Mullen (56% coverage success rate in 10 career starts), the Raiders might be a new franchise quarterback away from a top five under-25 ranking.
The last bit seems somewhat strange. It’s a compliment to the overall under-25 talent, but how they can be discounted by Derek Carr is a bit of a mystery to me.
That isn’t to say they’re wrong in their opinion of Carr. Just that how it can negatively reflect on other players like Jacobs, Crosby, Miller, and Mullen is beyond me.
Or maybe they’re just saying should they draft a new QB, and he shows well, they would have an under-25 player at the most crucial position on the team. Even if that’s the case, it’s a strange way to judge the whole group.