Las Vegas Raiders feel like the 2025 NFL Draft class is perfect for helping them balance need vs. best player available
When the NFL Draft is in town, there are always two sides to every draft strategy, and for the Las Vegas Raiders, that's no different. There's the best player available strategy, which mostly takes place early in the draft and Round 1. Then there's drafting for need. For the Raiders, they pick early in the […]
When the NFL Draft is in town, there are always two sides to every draft strategy, and for the Las Vegas Raiders, that's no different. There's the best player available strategy, which mostly takes place early in the draft and Round 1. Then there's drafting for need.
For the Raiders, they pick early in the draft at No. 6, but very well could trade up or back. With the position they are in as a team, you would think they would go with their biggest need, but this early in the draft, they will likely go with the best player available on their board, which could also be a player that fulfills a need, too, but not necessarily the biggest need.
With this draft class, the Raiders are in a good position to address at least one need in the first round. It also helps that they have so many needs, but the class is a good one for what the Raiders need to do.
"There are a lot of really good players," Spytek said on Friday. "I mean, I don't really want to get into the depth of each of
our position groups on the board. People are going to start breaking that down and think that we have a
tell. I think we just came from the draft room, actually, and the way that it looks right now, we're excited
about the players in a lot of different positions.
"And I think the cool thing is they match up with some
of where Coach [Carroll] and I think that this team can get better. And that makes us feel good, because it
feels like we can get a good player across the board that is going to help our team this year and then in
years to come as well."
It seems like most everyone still has Ashton Jeanty to the Raiders, and that would be a pick that does address a need, and still addresses the BPA strategy. However, if a player falls, don't rule out that BPA strategy really starting to take effect with guys like Abdul Carter, Mason Graham, or maybe even Travis Hunter, even though I seriously doubt that happens.
There are so many different things that the Raiders could do in this draft class. But for right now, it feels like Ashton Jeanty is the guy. Even if a scenario happened where someone fell to them, they could still draft for need at the RB position later in the draft because the RB class is so deep.
The thing is, though, that we truly don't know what the Raiders are going to do. We have an idea of all of the possibilities, but no matter how much you do research on what Spytek did with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, or what Carroll did with the Seattle Seahawks, you just don't know.
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