Oakland Raiders TE Position Doesn’t Require Upgrades Or Wholesale Changes

The Oakland Raiders, to hear some people tell it, are in desperate need of a new tight end – so, let’s debunk that garbage notion.

The Oakland Raiders had one of the most productive offenses in the entire NFL last season. And it was by far, their most prolific offensive showing since Rich Gannon and Tim Brown wore the Silver and Black.

As good as they were though, there is still room for this offensive unit to grow and get even better. But the tweaks the offense needs requires a scalpel and a delicate touch – not the Leatherface-hopped-up-on-a-dozen-Red-Bulls-waving-a-chainsaw-around treatment some are so vehemently suggesting.

One of the biggest areas of contention in some corners of the Raider Nation surrounds the tight end position. Some seem convinced that the Raiders are in dire need of an upgrade and that the tight ends on the roster are incapable of getting it done and have woefully underperformed.

To put it in a mild, and entirely British way – bollocks on that.

To make the case that McKenzie and the Raiders should go after a tight end like a Martellus Bennett or a Jared Cook, proponents of that particular belief will often cite the productivity of the likes of Travis Kelce or Greg Olsen to back up their point.

But comparing Kelce and Olsen to Clive Walford and Mychal Rivera is a terrible comparison. It’s apples and oranges, to say the least.

The problem with the comparison is that Kelce and Olsen have a different – and larger – role in their team’s offense than Walford and Rivera did. With the focal point of Oakland’s offense running through Amari Cooper and Michael Crabtree, Walford and Rivera got significantly fewer looks than some of the other top tight ends in the league.

It’s not so much a matter of Oakland’s tight ends “underperforming” as they were “underutilized.”

Let’s just illustrate the point. Some fans salivate over the productivity of Kelce. And rightly so. With 85 receptions for 1,125 yards and four touchdowns, you can’t say that Kelce was anything other than a beast this year.

Ditto that with Olsen, who went off for 80 catches, racked up 1,073 yards and hauled in three scores, putting him up there with the best tight ends in the league.

Some are bemoaning the fact that between the two of them, Walford and Rivera combined for 51 receptions, racked up a total of 551 yards, and had four scores.

Sure, in comparison, the numbers look pretty stark. Seeing those numbers side by side like that would absolutely make you scratch your head and think that, yeah maybe the Raiders have a tight end problem and need to bring somebody in to help fix that.

Except, those numbers, presented in their raw form like that, lack the all important context. Context is key and the devil – as they say – is in the details.

Though Kelce and Olsen put up monster numbers for tight ends, the former was targeted 117 times by quarterback Alex Smith and the latter had 129 targets. They put up some fantastic numbers, but they also had a lot more opportunity to do so.

Compare those numbers with those of Oakland’s tight ends. Walford was targeted just 52 times last season, while Rivera got a not-so-grand total of 25 targets. If you want to go super numbers-geek, Walford’s 64 percent reception rate was the highest on the team of anybody with 50 or more targets – better than both Cooper and Crabtree. Rivera checked in with a 72 percent catch rate, but also had far fewer targets to work with

But both players put up better than 10 yards a reception – which would seem to make it fair to say that had Walford and Rivera been targeted anywhere near as often as Kelce and Olsen, they might have put up some impressive numbers and we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.

So, once again, it’s not a matter of Oakland’s tight ends “underperforming,” it’s a case of them being “underutilized.”

One would hope that with a switch in offensive coordinators – gone is Bill Musgrave and in is Todd Downing – that they will make the tight end position an important one in the offense. While the passing game is obviously going to go through the great talent of Cooper and Crabtree, one can hope that Walford will find himself in the mix a little more often as well.

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Walford has shown that he has remarkable talent. He has tremendous upside and can be a solid contributor to this offense if given the chance. It’s up to the coaches and Derek Carr to find him more often in the passing game and let him flash his big play potential.

So, how about instead of dropping a lot of money on a free agent tight end, they use the ones already on the roster – because there is a pretty good one in Walford already.