Oakland Raiders Have To Utilize A Few Overlooked Playmakers To Excel

Former Oakland Raiders OC Bill Musgrave did a lot to modernize the team’s offense – yet, he continually overlooked a key element that could have helped the unit be one of the league’s best.

For all of the good things former Oakland Raiders OC Bill Musgrave did for the team’s offense – and there were many – he did fail to fully utilize their arsenal of weapons. If he had and didn’t continue overlooking players who could have been key contributors, Oakland’s passing game could have been one of the league’s very best.

As it stands, the Raiders did have one of the better passing games, ranking in the upper half of the league. Thirteenth overall, if you’re scoring at home. It certainly was a tremendous step forward from past seasons when they dwelled near the bottom.

One can’t help but wonder “what if” though. How good could this team’s passing offense have been had Musgrave effectively utilized a few players who were criminally neglected – namely, the team’s tight ends.

Of the team’s 596 passing attempts last season (Derek Carr with 560, Connor Cook with 21, and Matt McGloin with 15), Oakland’s tight ends were targeted just 83 times. 83. Let that sink in for a minute.

Clive Walford led the way with 33 receptions on 52 targets, while Mychal Rivera had 18 receptions on 25 targets and Lee Smith was a perfect six for six. Oakland’s tight ends accounted for a cumulative 580 yards and four touchdowns in 2016.

The tight ends caught about 70 percent of the passes thrown their way and were otherwise, pretty solid and reliable for the offense last season.

Which begs the question – why didn’t Musgrave target them more often?

Obviously, Michael Crabtree and Amari Cooper are the team’s dynamic duo and are going to get the lion’s share of looks. Last season, the Crabtree/Cooper combination was targeted 277 times and hauled in 172 of those – a reception rate of about 62 percent.

Cooper and Crabtree put up solid numbers. Seth Roberts was adequate in the slot, and the team’s running backs – Latavius Murray, Jalen Richard, and DeAndre Washington – complemented the passing game out of the backfield well.

But it’s pretty shocking to think that Oakland’s running backs were targeted more often than a pair of solid pass catching tight ends. Oakland’s three main backs, Murray, Washington, and Richard were targeted 105 times and took in 79 receptions for 573 yards and a pair of touchdowns.

While it’s always a good idea to have some pass catching threats coming out of the backfield, having the threat of pass catching tight ends who can create mismatches in the second level of that defense is an even better one.

Not to invoke the unholy name within the Raider Nation, but the New England Patriots do a fantastic job of integrating pass catching tight ends into their offensive schemes and that seems to have worked out pretty well for them, don’t you think?

And yet, for whatever reason, despite having talented pass catchers like Walford and Rivera on the roster, Musgrave declined to utilize them to their fullest extent.

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The hope is that with Musgrave out and a more forward thinking, flexible, and innovative OC in Todd Downing, Oakland will finally put the pieces of that particular puzzle together and start using their tight ends as a real threat rather than treat them like an afterthought.

Having added Jared Cook this offseason to pair with Walford, if Downing can find ways to utilize his tight ends as effectively as New England does, this team’s passing game could take a big step forward.

Big, strong, and fast, Cook and Walford are fantastic weapons for Carr to have at his disposal. If utilized, they can add a whole new dimension to this offense they could move from being one of the league’s better units to being one of the league’s elite units.

But they need to stop treating the tight ends as afterthoughts and make them key contributors to this offense.