Raiders Did Their Due Diligence Before Selecting TE Brock Bowers

The Las Vegas Raiders now have two of the best tight ends to enter the National Football League in recent memory.

Georgia tight end Brock Bowers (19) celebrates after scoring a touchdown during the second half of a / Joshua L. Jones / USA TODAY NETWORK

Almost no one could have seen the Las Vegas Raiders selecting tight end Brock Bowers from Georgia with the 13th overall pick in the NFL Draft. However, practically no one could have predicted the first round would play out as it did, either. While the first few picks went as expected, multiple teams made surprise picks, including the Raiders, after the sixth pick of the draft.

The Raiders took the best player available, though, not at a position of need. It was a questionable move, but the Raiders made an understandable choice, considering how the draft played out. 

"We went through a lot of prep and scenarios, and just the way it worked out, we kind of figured there could be a lot of quarterbacks going early, too, just by looking at the needs of who was there,” said Raiders general manager Tom Telesco. “Because somebody may come down that maybe usually wouldn't, didn't know who it would be, but the fact that it was somebody that can really make some plays on the offensive side of the ball was helpful."

When the 13th pick rolled around, the top-six quarterbacks were off the board. No defensive players had been selected, and the Raiders would have been choosing the third or fourth-ranked offensive lineman in the draft. While offensive line was undoubtedly a pressing need, the Raiders had the chance to draft an impact player in Bowers, and they did so.

"He's [Bowers] tough,” Telesco said. “When you play at Georgia, as a tight end, you have to be able to block. And in the SEC, he's played against some real defenders. ourselves. But he's an athletic move receiving tight end, but he can get down and block a bit on the line of scrimmage, which you're going to have to do at this level, too. So, this kind of shows you what his game's like."

Telesco said he and the Raiders had about the usual amount of contact a team has with a potential draft pick, not to tip off other teams to their interest in Bowers.

"The normal amount of contact,” Telesco said. “We don't like to put up billboards on who we're going to be possibly interested in. But yeah, we did a lot of work on Brock. Our scouts had seen him for obviously not his freshman year. You're not eligible, but he obviously he jumped out as a freshman right away.

“But yeah, good amount of work through the fall, through the pre-draft process, all the way through it just like everybody else. You do all the work on all these guys because you never know who you're going to be taking in reality. We do cut our board down pretty significantly as we do a lot of work for a smaller group of players, but you have to be prepared for every scenario, so that worked out."

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