The Las Vegas Raiders traded for Geno Smith this offseason and paired him with a plethora of young and talented players. Rookies Ashton Jeanty, Jack Bech and Dont'e Thornton Jr. were all expected to grow up fast and contribute to the Raiders' offense right away.
While Jeanty started off slow, he has started to find his footing at the NFL level. The wide receiver unit, however, has been a major letdown aside from Tre Tucker, and that includes veteran Jakobi Meyers.
Tucker is the only wideout to find the end zone this season through the air. By contrast, Bech and Thornton have failed to make much of an impact, and Meyers' presence has not been felt at all, despite this being a crucial time for him, contractually speaking.
Raiders advised to sit struggling rookie Dont'e Thornton Jr.
Raider Nation had high hopes for Thornton, especially as the 6-foot-5 receiver with 4.3-second 40-yard dash speed impressed his teammates, the coaching staff and the fan base during training camp and the preseason.
However, he has failed to affect the game during the regular season. While he has played over 60% of the offensive snaps, he has just 94 receiving yards on five receptions. The Athletic's Ted Nguyen spoke on the Just Win Podcast, and he suggested that Thornton be benched until further notice.
"I don’t like them using Dont’e Thornton as an option route guy at the same time. We’ve talked about this, Thornton. His development as a receiver is just really far behind where it needs to be, and he’s really hurting the team at this point. He should have caught that pass early on, and that’s one of the mistakes that kind of snowballed this team," Nguyen said. "Geno throws a perfect pass to Dont’e Thornton again on a fade route on a third and long, and it gets dropped, and I think that’s when the block punt happened right after that. They’ve got to just replace Dont’e Thornton’s reps with Jack Bech right now, and just work around his strengths because it’s just not working. You need to develop this guy in practice and hope that next year he could be ready to take the field, but it’s just a net negative with him right now."
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Thornton Jr. played well in Week 1, but he has not caught a pass since Week 3, despite playing 63 snaps and being targeted four times. He has received just 16 total targets this season; meanwhile, Bech, who has played around 20% of the offensive snaps, has caught five of his seven targets for 60 yards.
Bech received the most playing time of his career in Week 5, as he was on the field more than Thornton Jr. for the first time. The second-round rookie responded with the best game of his career, finishing with 27 receiving yards on three receptions, so he is certainly trending in the right direction.
While it is unclear if the game plan going forward will consist of more Bech and less Thornton Jr., the former was drafted higher and has shown more production to begin the year. Thornton Jr. still has the talent to become one of the most lethal weapons on the Raiders' offense, but he's clearly not there yet.