After a record-setting rookie campaign where he had 112 catches for 1,194 yards, some level of regression was going to come for Las Vegas Raiders tight end Brock Bowers last season. A lingering knee injury that led to five missed games assured it, as he finished with 64 receptions for 680 yards.
He did set a personal best with seven touchdown grabs in 2025, but everyone knows, or hopes, that last season was an injury-fueled blip in an otherwise stellar career for Bowers. There are strong signs that this will be the case, rooted in upgrades at quarterback and the offensive environment.
With question marks at wide receiver, and even if there weren't, Bowers will be the No. 1 target in the Raiders' passing game this year and every year until further notice. Of course, opposing defenses will put heavy focus on him, so the challenge for Klint Kubiak will be to find ways to get him open.
Bold prediction for Brock Bowers proves Las Vegas Raiders' TE is ready to take the NFL mantle
ESPN's Ben Solak has offered 10 bold predictions for the 2026 NFL season. Some of them are certainly more aggressive or a longer shot than others. That includes Solak's prediction related to Bowers:
"Brock Bowers will win Offensive Player of the Year"
If you're thinking to yourself, "It has to be rare for a tight end to win Offensive Player of the Year," you aren't going quite far enough, actually.
"A tight end has never won the AP Offensive Player of the Year," Solak wrote. "The closest one has gotten was Travis Kelce in 2020, with a whopping three votes to tie Bills QB Josh Allen for fourth. Arizona's Trey McBride got a first-place vote last year for his 126-catch, 1,239-yard, 11-touchdown season -- rightfully so. But it would have been tough to catch Seahawks wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba."
Solak noted how Kubiak was able to funnel targets to Smith-Njigba as the Seahawks' offensive coordinator last season via alignments, motions, etc. Bowers has the required alignment versatility, with upside potential based on a few factors Solak cited.
"It might already feel like he has been funneled targets in the Raiders' poor offense, but he has only a 24.8% target rate on routes run over his two years in the NFL. That's 21st among all high-volume receivers (200-plus routes) and fourth among tight ends.
"Bowers had his record-setting rookie production (112 catches, 1,194 yards) with quarterbacks Gardner Minshew II and Aidan O'Connell throwing him the vast majority of his targets"
Obviously, any combination of Fernando Mendoza and Kirk Cousins is better than Minshew and O'Connell. But Solak then noted how the Raiders winning a fair amount of games this season would be a requirement for Bowers to win Offensive Player of the Year.
"Bowers can't just feast as the lone option on a losing team, though. That's what McBride did -- he set the tight end record with 126 receptions last season, beating the previous mark by 10 catches. But nobody cared about the Cardinals, so his draw against Smith-Njigba (and Christian McCaffrey and Puka Nacua and Bijan Robinson) was really tough. It will take a soft draw for Bowers to emerge, but given the attention with Mendoza in hand, I think he'll see enough shine that he wins this award with a record-setting season of his own. McBride did it with catches, but I think Bowers might be better suited to best Kelce's 1,416 receiving yards from 2020."
That Solak can make any kind of viable case for Bowers to win an award that a tight end has never won before says everything about the potential he has. It proves that he is nearing the NFL mountaintop at the position, if he's not already at the summit in some people's eyes.
But even if he doesn't set any records or win any awards this season, Bowers is well in line for a big rebound campaign in his third season with the Raiders.
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