Silver And Black Pride
Las Vegas Raiders should experiment, rotate at slot receiver
Over the course of offseason team activities (OTAs) and mandatory minicamp, the Las Vegas Raiders moved their wide receivers around to see what the various alignments, fits, and personnel groupings to get insight on production and synergy.
This, of course, is a byproduct of new head coach Pete Carroll and his coaching staff working with the roster they built alongside general manager John Spytek.
“Well, we learned a lot. The whole purpose here is to figure them out, figure guys out; it’s a relationship that we that we’re building on, that we need to know who we’re teaching and how they operate, how they function and all that,” Carroll said on the last day of Raiders mandatory minicamp last Thursday. “So, the whole time has been about information gathering. You would think it’s all on the football field, but it’s way more than that, and we’ve gone to great depths trying to get to understand our guys, what’s important to them, what are their goals and their principles, and how they approach stuff so that we can better teach them and reach them. So, I wouldn’t even know where to start. There’s a million things.”
Thus expect the practice of moving receivers around at the different spots — X and Z (outside spots) and the slot — to continue well into training camp in mid-July and preseason games. Carroll and his coaching staff have plenty to learn about the players.
That said, the Silver & Black would be wise to continue that practice when contests start counting come the regular season.
Why a fluid rotation of personnel groupings?
Two reasons:
According to the Athletics' Tashan Reed and ESPN’s Ryan McFadden, the Raiders strategically placed both Jakobi Meyers and rookie Jack Bech (second-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft) inside in the slot and outside on the perimeter. Our Matt Holder explored Meyers’ effectiveness in the slot versus the boundary and his findings are intriguing.
Shuttling Meyers and Bech inside did allow Las Vegas to get a look at Tre Tucker and rookie Dont’e Thornton Jr. (fourth-round pick in April’s draft) as outside options. Both are fleet-footed wideouts with Thornton providing size (6-foot-5) to go along with his 4.30-flat speed.
“... I think Dont’e is unique in terms of he’s just a hair under 6-5 and he ran 4.3. There’s not a lot of humans on this planet that do that,” Raiders offensive coordinator Chip Kelly said of the rookie wide receiver after one of team’s OTAs in late May. “And I think if you had a draw up an outside receiver, you would pick that type of body type, someone that’s got length, someone that’s got a huge catch radius, but also has speed. Sometimes you can get a big guy like that, but he can’t really run, so they can stay with him. So, you add...
