Raiders general manager Mike Mayock knows exactly what his team needs.
Speed. Lots of it. Especially at the wide receiver position.
Because the Raiders’ wide receiver corps didn’t have much of it in 2019, Mayock says other teams were able to focus on stopping tight end Darren Waller and running back Josh Jacobs and not have to worry about the wideouts who couldn’t really stretch the field.
“We don’t have enough speed,” Mayock recently told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Mayock believed the Raiders had addressed the problem by adding Antonio Brown and Tyrell Williams in the offseason, but Brown was released before he played a regular-season game, and Williams was hampered by injuries. So, Mayock knows he has some work to do to inject some speed into the receiving group this offseason through free agency or the draft.
“If we’re going to take it to another level, that position has to get better,” said Mayock.
The good news is, the Raiders have two first-round selections (Nos. 12 and 19) and three third-round picks (Nos. 80, 81 and 92) this spring.
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“I certainly think there’s a lot of wideouts in this draft,” Mayock said. “It’s a deep wide receiver draft.”
One wide receiver who could fit the mold of what Mayock wants is Alabama’s Jerry Jeudy. Some mock drafts have the Raiders selecting him with their top first-round pick. Jeudy, who is 6-foot-1 and 192 pounds, has had back-to-back big seasons for the Crimson Tide, catching 68 passes for 1,315 yards and 14 touchdowns in 2018 and 77 for 1,163 and 10 TDs in 2019. And, he’s fast. At Alabama in 2019, he was reportedly clocked at 4.40 seconds in the 40-yard dash and is likely to improve on that this year.
