Raiders' Tight End Room is 'All in it Together'

Las Vegas Raiders tight ends Michael Mayer and Brock Bowers are competing, but they also need to be on the same page for them and the offense to be successful.

Las Vegas Raiders TE Michael Mayer / Darrell Craig Harris, Sports Illustrated

When the Las Vegas Raiders selected tight end Brock Bowers with their first-round pick in this year's NFL Draft, there were questions as to what second-year tight end Michael Mayer's role would be.

Mayer, who had a respectable first NFL season, is expected by many to take a backseat to Bowers, the best tight end to come out of the draft in quite some time. But with Offensive Coordinator Luke Getsy's favoring of a 12-personnel offense, that might not be the case.

Those on the outside have made it a discussion of Bowers vs. Mayer. Mayer, however, does not view it that way.

"If you're running a lot of 12-personnel, the Y and the F have to communicate or it's never going to work out," Mayer recently said at training camp. "And look, I mean, the first day Brock got there in the spring, I told him, 'Dude, look, we're in this thing together now. We got to talk, we got to communicate, it's not going to work out if we don't.' So, yeah, we're out there talking all the time."

Bowers spoke on this shortly after.

"Him and all the other tight ends kind of took me in like one of their own and just have been helping me out tremendously," the rookie tight end said. "And yeah, we're all in it together now. So, it's just a big "We" thing out there."

As important as that communication among that group is, obviously, the wide receiver room has to be in sync with the tight ends as well.

Mayer spoke on helping the wideouts get lined up.

"That's our job," Mayer said. "That's the tight end's job. Look we all got to be legal, right? If we're all on the ball, the wide receiver needs to be off. If we're off, the wide receiver needs to be on. And it's our job, from the inside of the formation, to look out and check what the receiver's doing and make sure we're legal, get the play off."

Mayer and Bowers could be a special tandem for the Raiders' offense. Between their presence and a very talented wide receiver room, whoever starts at quarterback will have plenty of weapons to throw to.

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