A couple of days after their first preseason game against the Arizona Cardinals, the Las Vegas Raiders made a roster move.
According to ESPN's Jeremy Fowler, and later confirmed by the team, the Raiders have signed veteran defensive tackle Foley Fatukasi. As for the corresponding move to make room on the roster for Fatukasi, outside linebacker Brennan Jackson has been placed on IR.
After the game against the Cardinals, Raiders head coach Klint Kubiak said Jackson had suffered a foot injury. Upon further evaluation on Friday, it was deemed bad enough to warrant putting him on IR for the second straight season.
The third-year man out of Washington State played three games for the Raiders last season before landing on IR with a foot injury. It's unclear if the new injury is to the same foot. The Raiders have needed to add some experience to their interior defensive line, and Fatukasi is undeniably that.
Raiders add experience and size to their interior DL in Foley Fatukasi
Fatukasi has played eight NFL seasons for three teams (New York Jets, Jacksonville Jaguars, Houston Texans), appearing in 90 games with 64 starts. He spent the last two seasons with the Texans, but a shoulder injury limited him to just four games in 2025.
In recent weeks, in what seems like a sure-fire sign he is fully healthy, Fatukasi has had workouts with the New York Giants and Detroit Lions. Why neither of those teams signed him could be brought up as a pertinent question, but they do have deeper defensive lines than the Raiders.
Pro Football Focus has generally not been a very big fan of Fatukasi's work over the course of his career, but it is often hard to truly and fully quantify the work of an interior defensive lineman via analytics.
Regardless, he possesses good size (6-foot-4, 318 pounds), and he has versatility to line up in multiple spots across the kind of 3-4 defensive front the Raiders are moving to this year under Rob Leonard.
In what could just be a coincidence of timing, the Raiders play the Texans in their second preseason game on Thursday, with joint practices preceding it. So, Fatukasi has some familiarity with the upcoming opponent, with as much of a "revenge game" angle as a preseason game can provide, assuming he even suits up.
Time will tell if Fatukasi sticks around and makes the Raiders' 53-man roster. But at this point on the calendar, he's a solid flyer to take, and the fairly quick move to sign him signals he has been on the radar. It is unfortunate, though, that Jackson has met the same fate in consecutive years.
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