Stock down: Johnny Townsend
The Johnny Townsend experiment looks to have come to an end, as he finished the evening with three punts for 127 yards and a 43 yard average. Townsend, who was a phenomenal punter in college has had difficulty translating his strength to the NFL, and coming off of a disappointing 2018 campaign in which he finished with the same 43.5 average, we may see rookie AJ Cole take over the punting role this week in Arizona.
In 2018, the Raiders struggled mightily in the field position game, and that was largely part to Townsend’s inability to get the ball down the field. While Cole has to continue to get better if he hopes to unseat Townsend for the 2019 campaign, he did everything he could to do just on Saturday night.
There are a ton of position battles going on within the Raiders organization, but this is definitely one of the more important ones. There is nothing like winning the field position battle, and Cole showed on Saturday that he not only can boot the ball, but do so with accuracy. Oh yeah, he also kicks off.