The 2023 Raiders began the season with 7 White starters but just 12 total on the 53 man roster. This year they start 8, while the total on the roster has increased nicely to 18. There also 7 Whites on the practice squad.
And this team has some excellent White players and exciting young talent. TE Brock Bowers is the very rare White player who is being referred to as a “generational talent.” The most recent tight end given that description was Kyle Pitts of the Falcons, who has been far from exceptional in the NFL, but in the case of Bowers it will be very surprising if he doesn’t turn out to be a megastar. Fast and super-athletic, as many observers have said he could play and excel at tailback and wide receiver as easily as he does at tight end and it’ll be a shame if Las Vegas doesn’t fully utilize his skill set all over the field. While that hasn’t happened yet, Bowers is off to a great start with 15 catches already in his first two NFL games, which is especially impressive given that many top TEs have gotten off to sluggish starts.
Running back Dylan Laube out of small school program New Hampshire was selected in the sixth round of this year’s draft and has received nothing but rave reviews, surprising veteran CFers who are used to the media ignoring or writing off overachievers at the taboo positions, especially those from small programs. Laube would seem to be a natural as a third down receiving back who has the ability to run well if called upon, but was a healthy scratch for the new season’s first two games, indicating he may serve a racial apprenticeship in his rookie season. However, injuries at running back are frequent and it’s too early to make a definitive judgment on how Laube will be used or not used in 2024.
Drafting Bowers in the first round quashed the hopes of DWFs that the Raiders would go with an upsider at quarterback, which left savvy veteran Gardner Minshew and second year man Aidan O’Connell to battle for the starting job, with Minshew winning the competition. O’Connell has a lot of talent but is less proven than Minshew, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him starting some games again this season depending on whether or not the team is in the playoff hunt.
Second year tight end Michael Mayer out of Notre Dame also starts. He was an early second round pick in ’23. While not possessing the elite receiving ability of Bowers, Mayer is a very solid all-around talent and gives the team a topnotch one-two at the position. Bowers played 68% of the snaps in each of the season’s first two games while Mayer played 57% and 62%.
Harrison Bryant, a fourth round draft pick by Cleveland and a Mackey Award winner who spent four seasons in that Caste wasteland, is the third tight end.
The left tackle is Colton Miller, a first round pick out of UCLA in 2018 who is the anchor of the offensive line. Fun fact: Miller set the Combine record for the broad jump by an o-lineman at 10’ 1”.
Cody Whitehair starts at left guard, with Andre James the starting center.
Vegas drafted Jackson Powers-Johnson in the second round in 2024 after Powers-Johnson won the Rimington Trophy as the best center in the FBS in 2023. He currently backs up Whitehair and James but the team obviously didn’t draft him to be a backup for long.
At left defensive end, Maxx Crosby is as good as it gets. I wrote in the Steelers write-up that T. J. Watt is the best defensive player in the league, but Crosby is right there with him. Crosby is long and lean and fast and tenacious and basically unstoppable. He has never missed a game in his first five years in the league and last year put up ridiculous stats – 90 total tackles to go with 14.5 sacks.
CFers have posted extensively about middle linebacker Robert Spillane, who was mostly treated as a joke by DWFs and the Pittsburgh sports media while with the Steelers for four seasons, highlighted by alleged NFL “expert” Matt Williamson on more than one occasion stating that Spillane “belongs nowhere near an NFL field.” The Raiders obviously thought differently and signed Spillane after the ’22 season as a free agent. All Spillane did after finally getting to start was make 148 tackles, 82 of them solo, adding 3.5 sacks and 3 interceptions in ‘23. But because he ran a 4.77 40 time he was never regarded previously as anything more than a “team mascot” type at best. Idiots.
The Raiders have had an interesting history from a Caste Football perspective. They were great in the 1960s and ‘70s and had numerous superstars at the positions that today’s “common wisdom” holds Whites aren’t good enough to play. Then beginning in the ‘80s and stretching well into the 21st century, founding owner Al Davis became infatuated with “speed,” resulting in many busts being drafted and the team going through a decades long dry spell briefly interrupted one season when they were blown out by Tampa in Super Bowl XXXVII. Many of those dry years the Raiders had the blackest or nearly blackest roster in the NFL.
That briefly changed when Mike Mayock was hired as GM and Jon Gruden as head coach after the 2018 season, to the point that the Raiders started 4 Whites on defense one season. But Gruden was “canceled” and Mayock canned, mainly because his “draft guru” status on the NFL Network translated poorly to the NFL itself, resulting in terrible first round picks such as Alex Leatherwood and Clelin Ferrell.
Now the team has a Black head coach in Antonio Pierce who seems fair by the standards of the NFL such as they are, and the GM is Tom Telesco, who spent 11 seasons as the GM of the Chargers, not known during that time period as one of the more relatively White friendly teams, so we’ll see what the future holds. For now the Raiders are a team to root for.
QB: Gardner Minshew, Aidan O’Connell
RB: Dylan Laube
LT: Kolton Miller
LG: Cody Whitehair, Jackson Powers-Johnson
C: Andre James
RG: Jordan Meredith
TE: Brock Bowers, Michael Mayer, Harrison Bryant
DE: Maxx Crosby
WLB: Luke Masterson
MLB: Robert Spillane, Tommy Eichenberg (drafted in fifth round in ’24)
P: A. J. Cole
PK: Daniel Carlson
LS: Jacob Bobenmoyer
Practice Squad: WR Alex Bachman (kicked around all over the league, will he ever get a chance?), TE John Samuel Shenker, QB Carter Bradley (looked good in the preseason), S Phalen Sanford, C Will Putnam, T Dalton Wagner, G Ben Brown
IR: G Jake Johanning
Number of White Starters: 8
Number of Whites on 53 Man Roster: 18
Grade: D+/C-
And this team has some excellent White players and exciting young talent. TE Brock Bowers is the very rare White player who is being referred to as a “generational talent.” The most recent tight end given that description was Kyle Pitts of the Falcons, who has been far from exceptional in the NFL, but in the case of Bowers it will be very surprising if he doesn’t turn out to be a megastar. Fast and super-athletic, as many observers have said he could play and excel at tailback and wide receiver as easily as he does at tight end and it’ll be a shame if Las Vegas doesn’t fully utilize his skill set all over the field. While that hasn’t happened yet, Bowers is off to a great start with 15 catches already in his first two NFL games, which is especially impressive given that many top TEs have gotten off to sluggish starts.
Running back Dylan Laube out of small school program New Hampshire was selected in the sixth round of this year’s draft and has received nothing but rave reviews, surprising veteran CFers who are used to the media ignoring or writing off overachievers at the taboo positions, especially those from small programs. Laube would seem to be a natural as a third down receiving back who has the ability to run well if called upon, but was a healthy scratch for the new season’s first two games, indicating he may serve a racial apprenticeship in his rookie season. However, injuries at running back are frequent and it’s too early to make a definitive judgment on how Laube will be used or not used in 2024.
Drafting Bowers in the first round quashed the hopes of DWFs that the Raiders would go with an upsider at quarterback, which left savvy veteran Gardner Minshew and second year man Aidan O’Connell to battle for the starting job, with Minshew winning the competition. O’Connell has a lot of talent but is less proven than Minshew, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him starting some games again this season depending on whether or not the team is in the playoff hunt.
Second year tight end Michael Mayer out of Notre Dame also starts. He was an early second round pick in ’23. While not possessing the elite receiving ability of Bowers, Mayer is a very solid all-around talent and gives the team a topnotch one-two at the position. Bowers played 68% of the snaps in each of the season’s first two games while Mayer played 57% and 62%.
Harrison Bryant, a fourth round draft pick by Cleveland and a Mackey Award winner who spent four seasons in that Caste wasteland, is the third tight end.
The left tackle is Colton Miller, a first round pick out of UCLA in 2018 who is the anchor of the offensive line. Fun fact: Miller set the Combine record for the broad jump by an o-lineman at 10’ 1”.
Cody Whitehair starts at left guard, with Andre James the starting center.
Vegas drafted Jackson Powers-Johnson in the second round in 2024 after Powers-Johnson won the Rimington Trophy as the best center in the FBS in 2023. He currently backs up Whitehair and James but the team obviously didn’t draft him to be a backup for long.
At left defensive end, Maxx Crosby is as good as it gets. I wrote in the Steelers write-up that T. J. Watt is the best defensive player in the league, but Crosby is right there with him. Crosby is long and lean and fast and tenacious and basically unstoppable. He has never missed a game in his first five years in the league and last year put up ridiculous stats – 90 total tackles to go with 14.5 sacks.
CFers have posted extensively about middle linebacker Robert Spillane, who was mostly treated as a joke by DWFs and the Pittsburgh sports media while with the Steelers for four seasons, highlighted by alleged NFL “expert” Matt Williamson on more than one occasion stating that Spillane “belongs nowhere near an NFL field.” The Raiders obviously thought differently and signed Spillane after the ’22 season as a free agent. All Spillane did after finally getting to start was make 148 tackles, 82 of them solo, adding 3.5 sacks and 3 interceptions in ‘23. But because he ran a 4.77 40 time he was never regarded previously as anything more than a “team mascot” type at best. Idiots.
The Raiders have had an interesting history from a Caste Football perspective. They were great in the 1960s and ‘70s and had numerous superstars at the positions that today’s “common wisdom” holds Whites aren’t good enough to play. Then beginning in the ‘80s and stretching well into the 21st century, founding owner Al Davis became infatuated with “speed,” resulting in many busts being drafted and the team going through a decades long dry spell briefly interrupted one season when they were blown out by Tampa in Super Bowl XXXVII. Many of those dry years the Raiders had the blackest or nearly blackest roster in the NFL.
That briefly changed when Mike Mayock was hired as GM and Jon Gruden as head coach after the 2018 season, to the point that the Raiders started 4 Whites on defense one season. But Gruden was “canceled” and Mayock canned, mainly because his “draft guru” status on the NFL Network translated poorly to the NFL itself, resulting in terrible first round picks such as Alex Leatherwood and Clelin Ferrell.
Now the team has a Black head coach in Antonio Pierce who seems fair by the standards of the NFL such as they are, and the GM is Tom Telesco, who spent 11 seasons as the GM of the Chargers, not known during that time period as one of the more relatively White friendly teams, so we’ll see what the future holds. For now the Raiders are a team to root for.
QB: Gardner Minshew, Aidan O’Connell
RB: Dylan Laube
LT: Kolton Miller
LG: Cody Whitehair, Jackson Powers-Johnson
C: Andre James
RG: Jordan Meredith
TE: Brock Bowers, Michael Mayer, Harrison Bryant
DE: Maxx Crosby
WLB: Luke Masterson
MLB: Robert Spillane, Tommy Eichenberg (drafted in fifth round in ’24)
P: A. J. Cole
PK: Daniel Carlson
LS: Jacob Bobenmoyer
Practice Squad: WR Alex Bachman (kicked around all over the league, will he ever get a chance?), TE John Samuel Shenker, QB Carter Bradley (looked good in the preseason), S Phalen Sanford, C Will Putnam, T Dalton Wagner, G Ben Brown
IR: G Jake Johanning
Number of White Starters: 8
Number of Whites on 53 Man Roster: 18
Grade: D+/C-
