How the 2023 Raiders offense will benefit Las Vegas in 2024

Rushing Stats

Many players ran the football for the Raiders, like quarterbacks on scrambles or wide receivers on end-around, but when it comes to the running back room, having 2 homegrown talents as your #1 and #2 backs is going to essentially tell the story. Josh Jacobs played 57.4% of the snaps, Zamir White played 21.9%, Ameer Abdullah played 20.7% of the snaps, and Brandon Bolden only played 0.5%. 

As far as Rushing Attempts, homegrown talent accounted for 88.1% of the carries. Jacobs had 56.4% of these while Zamir White totaled 29.2%. Other Raiders draft picks like Tre Tucker (10 attempts) and Aidan O’Connell (17 attempts) held small pieces of the pie, but this metric was largely carried by Jacobs and White.

Believe it or not, Jimmy Garoppolo was the biggest contributor for acquisition rushing attempts, as he ran the ball 20 times in his 7 games, while Ameer Abdullah was second with 15 attempts. 

Unsurprisingly, Rushing Yards were also dominated by former Raiders draft picks. Of the 1,542 rushing yards produced by Las Vegas in 2023, 1,256 of them were once again the work of Jacobs and White (805 and 451 respectively). Abdullah was the leading acquisition contributor, totaling 89 (5.8%) yards on the year, while Garoppolo and Bolden comprised another roughly 5% combined. 

Lastly, of the Raiders’ 11 Rushing Touchdowns, homegrown talent carried the load again with 8 (72.7%) of the touchdowns. Josh Jacobs put together 6 of these, while AOC and Zamir white each added 1. Of the 27.3% that the acquisitions totaled, Jakobi Meyers had 2 of them while Brandon Bolden collected the other. Once again, with such a low sample size, a few plays can throw off the data, but in this case, homegrown talent won out again.

Overall, our drafted talent once again outperformed the players that we acquired, dominating in all 3 major categories. This year, our running back room looks a bit different, with 2 of our top 3 backs having been acquired through free agency (Alexander Mattison and Ameer Abdullah). However, Zamir White, a 2022 4th-round Pick, still figures to be the bell cow back so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.