Last season, the tackle spots for the Raiders were cemented with good looking second-year left tackle Kolton Miller and steady veteran right tackle Trent Brown. After that, it gets shaky.
David Sharpe vs Sam Young
Position: Utility Reserve Tackle
Others: Brandon Parker, Kamaal Seymour
Trent Brown was lost to injury with five games left in the season. Brandon Parker got the first shot at it. The Raiders actually traded up in the third round of the 2018 draft to get Parker, so they would like to give him every opportunity to prove them right. But after three starts, it was obvious he hadn’t progressed from a brutal rookie season and Sharpe got the call.
A fourth-round pick by the Raiders in 2017, Sharpe didn’t make the squad initially out of camp in 2018. After two games with the Texans, he was brought back to Oakland at midseason, stepping in for jumbo formations.
He wasn’t all that, well, sharp in his two starts at the end of the season, but he was an improvement over Parker, which *should* give him the edge as the second-team right tackle when practices resume.
Entering the fold is ten-year veteran Sam Young. At 6-8, he’s got the size that Tom Cable loves. Young has never started a full season, but he has appeared in 92 games, starting 21 games for five different NFL teams. Of those 21 starts, 18 came at right tackle, while three came at left tackle.
Young’s most recent snaps came last season when he entered the game at right tackle for the 49ers for 10 plays late in a blowout win over the Panthers.
On one hand, Young has been good enough to have a long career in this league. On the other hand, the teams on which he has played have never seen fit to give him a starting job. He’s never entered the season as a starter. All of his starts have come in relief of the regular starter.
Sharpe has started four games in his three-year career. The first two were at left tackle in the final two games of his rookie season, the other two were last season at right tackle.
In his two starts last season, Sharpe gave up one sack. He wasn’t almost through his second start in the season finally, when Von Miller left him flatfooted to sack Carr with just under six minutes remaining in the game. It came five minutes after Miller had beaten Kolton Miller on the left side.
It’s a critical point in Sharpe’s career. He got the start in the finale mostly because he was the lesser of evils with Brandon Parker. Now he will have a proven veteran tackle in the mix, so he’ll have to do more than not be terrible.
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