In 2020, the Raiders planned to go to the playoffs. Instead, it was a season full of lessons.
That includes learning how to run a franchise during a pandemic, as every NFL team had to do — and still has to do — as COVID-19 hopefully continues to dissipate and vaccinations take hold.
On Wednesday, Raiders general manager Mike Mayock expressed some regret about his draft philosophy in 2020, when the pandemic first started to grip society. He mentioned to reporters the overall frustration of last year and how he’s better prepared this time around.
Part of Mayock’s angst revolved around Lynn Bowden Jr., one of his three third-round picks from a year ago. The Raiders tried to convert the college quarterback and wide receiver into a running back, a daring prospect in any campaign, and a doomed idea during a pandemic, as Mayock explains.
“If you look back at it and you think, should you be picking guys that perhaps were a projection from one position to another?” Mayock said. “You know, we took [Bowden] in the third round and ended up trading him to Miami before the seasons started. He was a college slot receiver and a quarterback and we tried to move him to running back in a pandemic year. And to be honest with you, I don’t think it was fair to the kid. We don’t even see him face-to-face live until training camp in July.”
The process was not fair to Bowden, and not very beneficial to the Raiders, as it turned out.
There were other possible issues surrounding Bowden, too. Reports suggested the Kentucky product enjoyed the Las Vegas lifestyle too much and was potentially a bad influence on WR Henry Ruggs III, the team’s first-round pick.
Mayock insisted he traded Bowden for on-the-field reasons, however. He sent Bowden to the Dolphins along with a sixth-round pick and received a fourth-round choice in return.
So what did Mayock learn? Well, a lot. He outlined additional issues stemming from the pandemic such as this year’s medical evaluations, which he says will be completed late and not be as “finite” as he’d like, and a lack of live, in-person conversations.
But his bottom line regarding the draft seems to be this: get what you can from the process rather than make it more complicated than it already is, especially during a pandemic.
“Basically, what I’m saying is that I think in a COVID year, you have to be nimble and you have to learn lessons,” said Mayock. “And you have to try to leverage the draft for whatever you can.”
Mayock needs to infuse the roster with talent, especially on defense, in a hurry, and it won’t be easy since he has fewer draft picks and less salary-cap space to work with than he has before. In his third draft with Las Vegas, the pressure is on, pandemic or not, to get his team to the playoffs in 2021, and any lesson learned should help.
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