Raiders reveal how close they came to trading for Michael Penix Jr.

There's been a lot of talk about the Raiders' draft class over the last couple of weeks. Not of all of it has been, you know, good, but still – people are talking! All press is good press, or something.

It was discouraging for a lot of Raiders fans to see the NFL Draft come and go without the team taking a quarterback. Vegas is still very much a roster in development, but that didn't exclude them from taking a shot on one of the many QBs available in this year's class. Granted, no one expected the Top 6 prospects to be off the board before the Raiders could even pick at 15, but that doesn't change the fact that there were opportunities to be had, if Tom Telesco wanted them.

Instead, the team went with Georgia tight end/eventual wide receiver Brock Bowers. It was widely considered a good pick, but the sting of not landing Michael Penix – or Jayden Daniels, for that matter – was still there. And in the latest big Draft profile from ESPN, NFL Insider Jeremy Fowler goes into a little detail about how that whole night went for LV's front office.

Raiders reveal how close they came to trading for Michael Penix Jr.

The new info comes from an article published on Tuesday, titled "Key intel on all 32 teams after the 2024 NFL draft." In it, Fowler dives into some new details about how the Raiders tried to work their first round pick:

"Much was made of the Raiders' draft plans -- and ultimate inaction -- at quarterback," he wrote. "Here's what I know: They explored trading for Jayden Daniels, but any attempts were futile due to Washington's stance that it wasn't dealing the No. 2 pick. Las Vegas also had interest in Michael Penix Jr., but most likely not in a trade up. He would have been considered at No. 13 or in a trade back. I heard from multiple people in Vegas that the team did not want to reach ... "

"In fact, multiple NFL scouts told me that Bowers might have been the best overall player in the entire field, but positional needs pushed him out of the top 10."

That all seems pretty par for the course. There had been rumblings of Daniels' interest in playing for Antonio Pierce – they know each other well from their time together at Arizona State – but it always felt unlikely that Washington was going to trade down considering how their QB stuff went last year. And I bet a lot of teams thought they were going to be able to trade down for Penix, so it's hard to blame the Raiders there. Never change, Atlanta.