Brock Bowers may be headed for a very different kind of role in Las Vegas this season.
Practice reports have pointed to head coach Klint Kubiak building plenty of the offense around him, and former Raiders quarterback Derek Carr said this week that Bowers could be the No. 1 option on 90 percent of Kubiak’s pass plays. Carr didn’t get into the specifics of how that usage might look, but the idea has already taken on a bigger shape around the team.
Former Raiders great Lincoln Kennedy suggested Tuesday that Bowers could wind up lining up as a “true” wide receiver.
“He’s gotten better and, in this offense, and the times that I’ve seen him in preseason or practice, they’ve got him involved in this offense. They’ve created matchup issues where he becomes a true wide receiver,” Kennedy said on the Locked on Raiders Squad Show.
That line fits with what one of Bowers’ former coaches said back in July. Scott Turner, who served as pass game coordinator and interim offensive coordinator in Las Vegas during Bowers’ record-breaking rookie season, said Bowers would adapt smoothly if he were used more like a receiver. Turner even compared him to Falcons wideout Drake London, while saying Bowers might bring a little more burst.
“Day to day, his understanding, everything about the game just comes really easily to him. You correct him on a technique, he’ll never make the same mistake twice. He sees the big picture, so you can line him up in any different spot-on offense, and he’s going to be able to do it,” Turner said on the Just Win podcast.
“I think if he just played receiver, if he wasn’t a tight end, if he played receiver, I think he’d be very similar to Drake London in Atlanta… And he’s actually probably a little more juice than him, like as far as his explosiveness and speed.”
The buzz around Bowers has only grown since the Raiders made him the 13th pick in the 2024 draft. The selection drew criticism at the time, especially with Michael Mayer already on the roster, but Bowers’ rookie year changed the conversation fast.
Vinny Bonsignore of the California Post said recently that the pushback wasn’t just coming from draft pundits. NFL executives were frustrated too, because plenty of teams wanted Bowers.
“I remember Brock Bowers, when they picked Brock Bowers, [an opposing team’s executive] was a little upset because there were a lot of people that loved Brock Bowers,” Bonsignore said on Raider Nation Radio’s JT the Brick Show.
“There were a lot of people, trust me, I talked to about four or five people from other teams that [Bowers] was their guy. They didn’t think that the Raiders were going to draft him that high because they had just drafted Michael Mayer. So there were some cuss words after that one, after Brock Bowers, because his team was one of the teams, one of the many teams that were drafting right behind the Raiders that wanted him.”
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