Las Vegas Raiders: Pros and Cons of drafting Jaylen Waddle at No. 17

Cons for the Raiders drafting Jaylen Waddle

As noted previously, the core of Jon Gruden’s offense isn’t the spread ’em out, sling it down the field type of offense. We definitely saw him dial up plays that allowed Derek Carr to be aggressive down the field, most notably to Nelson Agholor, but the offensive scheme that they relied on and used to get momentum going was more of a run-first, play action passing type offense.

The fear of bringing in someone like Waddle is whether his skill set would be properly utilized. Drafting Ruggs last year gave the Raiders that speedy downfield threat that could be moved around to multiple positions. Unfortunately, Ruggs dealt with injuries early. and we saw the offense that was supposed to be catered towards his abilities, be implemented and taken over by Agholor.

That’s not to say it was the wrong choice to take Ruggs due to his underwhelming production this year, as I believe he will grow into that next level weapon the Raiders plan on him being. But being able dial up special and specific plays to accentuate his skill set seemed to take a back seat to feeding other star players like Darren Waller.

So if getting one speedy, do it all type player involved in the offense was hard to do last season, deductive reasoning says it might be even more difficult to incorporate two such players effectively. The Raiders are likely to re-sign Agholor with the production he had this year, but to steal a saying from the NBA, “there’s only one ball” and getting enough touches and targets to warrant a top-20 pick might be hard to maneuver with such a talented group of weapons.

Waddle also suffered an ankle injury at the beginning of this season that kept him out all year. Even though he had a successful surgery and is expected to play in the National Championship game, a player who relies a lot on speed having an injury to a key joint like his ankle, doesn’t give a team or fan base the most peace of mind that further injury won’t pop up down the road.

Integrating the fact that the Raiders have needs elsewhere that are by all accounts more important to address early on in the draft then wide receiver, I find it hard to imagine them pulling the trigger on him or any other offensive wide out. If they were going to choose anyone that could potentially be there at No. 17 though, Waddle is as good a choice as any.

I expect them to focus more on the defensive line or back end of the secondary with their first round pick, two areas where the team struggled mightily in 2020, and really for a while now. Targeting a defensive tackle or free safety would be more important, but Waddle is the type of player that makes it hard to pass up on, especially when Gruden is pulling the trigger on the selection.