The Raiders’ decision to select Georgia tight end Brock Bowers on the first night of the 2024 NFL Draft raised some eyebrows.
Bowers, the top tight end in the draft, unexpectedly fell to Las Vegas at No. 13. The bigger surprise was the Raiders picking a tight end so high just a year after drafting Michael Mayer in the second round, potentially creating redundancy.
However, Mayer, unphased by the addition, expressed excitement about teaming up with the two-time John Mackey Award winner. In his first comments since Bowers’ selection, Mayer said, “He’s fast. He’s got great hands. He can block. He can do it all. I feel like we can both do it all,” Mayer told Vincent Bonsignore of the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Saturday. “I think we’re gonna be dangerous. I think we’re gonna have a great offense. That’s kind of all I’ve got to say about it. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
The third tight end taken in the 2023 NFL Draft behind Buffalo’s Dalton Kincaid and Detroit’s Sam LaPorta, Mayer had a quieter first season, finishing with 27 catches for 304 yards and two touchdowns in 14 games. Given his limited role in the passing game, the new coaching regime, and Bowers’ impressive pedigree, Mayer is likely to slot as the second tight end this season, even in 12 personnel, which the Raiders used only 14.2% of the time in 2023 (24th in the NFL), according to Next Gen Stats.
Nonetheless, Mayer is confident about the new setup. “100 percent, 100 percent. Look, our whole job is to win ball games. As an offense, we need to score touchdowns, and that’s what we’re going to do to the best of our ability,” Mayer told Bonsignore. “We can play a lot of 12 personnel, we can play a lot of 11, we’ve got a lot of weapons. I think you guys know that: We’ve got a lot of weapons.”
Mayer’s optimism aligns with Bowers’ earlier comments that Las Vegas will be hard to match up against “personnel-wise” with “two great tight ends.”
With uncertainties elsewhere on the Raiders’ roster, such as the impending quarterback competition between Aidan O’Connell and Gardner Minshew, Las Vegas’ tight ends feel confident in their contributions to the team’s success.
