The Las Vegas Raiders have only had a fully healthy Brock Bowers for one game this season, their Week 1 matchup against the New England Patriots. Since then, he’s been dealing with a knee injury.
Bowers tried to play through it, wearing a brace, but the coaching staff eventually shut him down for a couple of weeks to allow him to heal. After the bye week, the young tight end is expected to play when the Raiders face the Jacksonville Jaguars.
With Bowers potentially back, former Raiders running back Rashad Jennings stated that the Georgia product’s return, especially healthy, changes the entire makeup of the Las Vegas offense.
“I expect 89 back in the fold that it opens up the offense and we get to continue to oil and grease down that engine as much as we were doing from the very beginning,” Jennings said on the October 31 edition of “The Pregame.” “With a healthy Brock Bowers, it opens up the offense. It’s kind of… it’s ran through him. It’s kind of asking like, what does the offense look like with Travis Kelce or without Travis Kelce? You kidding me? It’s a big difference…
“I think it opens up the middle of the field. It opens up the backfield because now you have to count linebackers; they can’t just peel their ears back and blitz, they have to be worried about what’s going on in the deep middle. Tampa 2 opens up the run. It helps [Ashton] Jeanty. It softens the line. Everything happens because of how great Brock Bowers is. And I think the system is kind of built around him silently.”
Jaguars Are Well Aware of Raiders’ Brock Bowers
With potentially their top offensive weapon on the field for Week 9, Jaguars head coach Liam Coen shared his thoughts on facing the young Raiders star.
“I think you look at last year and early in the season,“ Coen told reporters about preparing to potentially face Bowers. “The first play of the season against the Patriots, they got him the ball on the very first play. When he’s healthy and available, he’s someone they definitely want to get the ball in his hands. As you go throughout the work week, you see, all right, where’s 89?
“We’ve got to make sure we understand where he is because he’s in the hip at tight end, he’s in an inline stance, he’s in the slot, he’s out at one. They want to move him around as the weapon that he is. I think we don’t want to say overprepare, but definitely lean more toward expecting them to get him going.”
Pete Carroll Talks Tyler Lockett Joining the Raiders
Bowers will have a new teammate on offense. On October 27, Las Vegas confirmed the addition of veteran wide receiver Tyler Lockett, reuniting him with head coach Pete Carroll and quarterback Geno Smith.
“High hopes for him and high hopes for us that we can make a good connection here, ” Carroll said on the latest episode of “1 on 1.“ “It’s a lot to ask a guy to jump in and be a regular player in a week’s time, but he’s going for it and we’ll see what happens by the end of the week. He’s in here over the weekend as soon as he found out that he was going to be a Raider.
“He’s a marvelous football player and a tremendous person; he’s one of the real natural ball players—he’s got great sense and feel and has always demonstrated that. Geno knows him really well. They’ve played together for quite some time, and there’s a chemistry between them that maybe can give us a little edge that we haven’t had with the younger guys who have been playing. We’ll see what happens and hold out good hopes for this to help us.”
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