Trades With Raiders Looking Better With Each Passing Week

The Miami Dolphins have been getting bigger contributions from rookie Lynn Bowden Jr. in recent weeks

The Miami Dolphins' playoff hopes are a lot more realistic than those of the Las Vegas Raiders as the teams prepare to face each other at Allegiant Stadium on Saturday night.

It's certainly a stretch to suggest the two trades the teams made with each other before the start of the regular season are big factors in that development, but it's also clear the Dolphins appear to have made out well in both deals.

In particular, the Dolphins certainly look like they have a keeper in rookie Lynn Bowden Jr., who the Raiders surprisingly decided to trade some four months after selecting him in the third round of the 2020 NFL draft.

The Dolphins gave the Raiders a fourth-round pick in the 2021 NFL draft for Bowden AND a sixth-round pick, an awfully small price to pay for a player who has been increased contributions in recent weeks.

After the Raiders tried to convert Bowden to running back after he played wide receiver and Wildcat quarterback at Kentucky, the Dolphins made wide receiver his primary position.

After having one reception in his first five NFL games, Bowden caught 17 passes over the past three games, including a team-high seven against the Kansas City Chiefs and a team-high six against the New England Patriots.

Bowden also has shown great open-field running ability, whether after a catch or when he's taken an occasional handoff.

“I’d say that you can watch kids that come through today and which ones played tag growing up and which ones didn’t play tag growing up," offensive coordinator Chan Gailey said this week. "If you played tag, then you know how to make a guy miss. He played a lot of tag, I guess, because he can make a guy miss. I’ve had a couple of guys like that in my career that can make a guy miss and see the field and see the next guy. There are a few of those out there and he’s got that little knack to be able to sidestep, juke, whatever term you want to use. He’s pretty good at avoiding that head-on collision, that full-speed tackle. He sees things very well and can control his body."

With injuries at wide receiver, Bowden has become an important player for the Dolphins, and one gets the feeling he'll become even more prominent in the next year and beyond.

"His development has not been as quick as he’s wanted, but he had a lot to learn," Gailey said. "He had a lot to learn in our offense. He got here late. He was learning what to do and where to line up and how to run the routes and where we wanted him. He’s really, really come on really well in the last three to four weeks. He’s starting to find where he is in the offense and make contributions. When he makes contributions, then that gives us more confidence to continue to use him and it’s a two-way street there.”

Bowden declined to discuss the trade or his time with the Raiders in previous media sessions, though one has to believe he's got to be happy with the way things turned out.

The other Dolphins-Raiders trade this summer saw Miami send linebacker Raekwon McMillan and a fifth-round pick to Las Vegas for a fourth-round selection.

This seems like an awfully small return for a player who had started 28 games the past two seasons, but McMillan became expendable because of the offseason additions of veterans like Kyle Van Noy and Elandon Roberts and he also was entering the final year of the rookie contract he signed as a second-round pick in 2017.

The way the Dolphins defense has performed in 2020, it's pretty obvious that McMillan hasn't been missed, particularly when considering his very limited contribution to the Raiders defense. McMillan has only 14 tackles on defense in 14 games (two starts) for the Raiders, but worse he has played only 77 total defensive snaps, an average of less than six per game.

That the Dolphins got anything for McMillan made it a good trade; the deal involving Bowden is looking more and more like a great trade.