The Las Vegas Raiders will be looking for a few key pieces this offseason. It is clear that one of the team’s biggest needs is wide receiver after that unit was seemingly a revolving door in 2019.
It’s no secret that the trade for Antonio Brown did not work out as planned as he was released before ever playing a game in the Silver and Black.
Additionally, the signing of Tyrell Williams also hasn’t been great yet as he was asked to be the team’s No. 1 receiver after Brown’s release when he really is a No. 2. He also dealt with plantar fasciitis in his foot for a majority of the season, which limited and kept him off the field at times.
Because of those issues, Raiders head coach Jon Gruden has acknowledged how important it will be to get a No. 1 receiver either through the draft or free agency this offseason, via Raiders.com:
“Well, I think it’s important. Unfortunately, we felt we added one of the best receivers in the league a year ago and he had frozen feet, and then we thought we had the best free agent receiver and he had fried feet from plantar fasciitis. So, the feet were a problem for us last year so we would like to add a great receiver certainly, but we still threw for a lot of yards. As many yards as most teams and if you’re into statistics and analytics we threw the ball well. We got a great tight end, we think we got an outstanding young slot receiver. We’ve got some running backs that can really catch it. There’s a lot of ways to throw it these days, but we got to improve our defense. We’ve got to improve some other areas as well. So, I guess to answer your question we’d love to add firepower to the offense and certainly to the defense.”
As Gruden said, the Raiders’ passing offense was actually quite good in 2019. The team finished with the ninth-most passing yards and Derek Carr had the second-best completion rate in the league. While Gruden still hopes Williams can have a solid comeback season after getting healthy, adding another down-field threat should do wonders for the offense that already has some solid pieces like Darren Waller and Josh Jacobs.
The emergence of Jacobs in the passing game will also be something to look out for as general manager Mike Mayock recently stated that the hope is to get him more involved in that aspect in 2020.
