From now till Thursday, September 1 — the day of the final preseason games — FantasyLabs will be releasing our 2016 team previews: 32 previews in 32 days. Are you ready for some football?
Oakland Raiders Team Preview
2015 was a celebratory landmark for the Raiders. Not only did they draft Amari Cooper, who was clearly the most polished wide receiver to come out of college last year, but they were also a road favorite for the first time since Week 2 of the 2012 season. That may not seem like much to the casual fan, but ask people who have cheered for Oakland for any substantial length of time and they’ll tell you differently.
Expectations for this year’s team are high — but the threat of relocation after the season looms large and diminishes some of the excitement surrounding this young-and-upcoming team. Still, for the first time since 2003 (the season after their unprecedented Super Bowl run), the Raiders are projected with a win total above .500. Opening the season at 7.5, the Raiders were soon bet up to 8.5.
Built around a young core of players who have been drafted within the last three years, the Raiders are favored by more points this year than they were last, and they’re dogs in only three games. Again, there’s a lot to like about this team.
Quarterback
Derek Carr
Carr started the year as hot as any quarterback, averaging 21.26 DraftKings points per game in the first half of the season. Had that stretch of play continued over the second half, Carr would’ve finished No. 9 in DK PPG.
Spoiler alert: That stretch of play did not continue.
Over his next eight games, Carr’s completion percentage dropped emphatically. In the first half, he had a 63.7 percent completion rate, a mark that would’ve tied Carson Palmer’s and Tyrod Taylor’s completion percentages at season’s end. In the second half, he completed only 58.6 percent of his passes, which would’ve been ‘good’ for 31st overall if extrapolated over the full season. Instead of finishing as a top-10 quarterback, Carr ended the season as the No. 20 signal caller in DK PPG.
Despite his struggles, Carr was amazingly consistent (and productive) in the red zone throughout the year. Carr completed 12 of 28 passes for 79 yards and eight touchdowns inside the 20-yard line through the first eight games, and then he completed 11 of 28 passes for 105 yards and nine touchdowns over his next eight. In 2016, regression of some sort seems likely to occur. His second-half numbers could improve. Or his red-zone numbers could get worse.
Unfortunately for Carr, his schedule in 2016 (arguably the toughest of any quarterback’s over the last 11 games) might be too much for him even if he is better than he showed in the last eight games of 2015. This year, in Week 1-5 the Raiders face the 32nd-, eighth-, 27th-, 25th-, and 12th-ranked defenses in terms of raw fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks last year. After that, seven of their next 11 opponents finished 2015 in the top 12 in passing defense per Football Outsiders’ Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) metric). Another hot start for Carr is likely, but there’s clearly reason to fade him beyond Week 5.
Running Backs
Latavius Murray
Also concerning for Carr is that the Raiders are likely to lean on their running game more in 2016, if their offseason acquisitions are any indication. For a combined $70.4 million dollars, Oakland signed Donald Penn and Kelechi Osemele, graded by Pro Football Focus as the 11th and 18th-overall tackles in 2015. Osemele is especially intriguing since he recorded the second-highest Run Block Grade among tackles last year. With Osemele slated to move to left guard, both will start on the offensive line with Rodney Hudson, PFF’s sixth-ranked center; Gabe Jackson, the 13th-ranked guard; and Austin Howard, the 15th-ranked tackle.
Of course, a running game doesn’t become more productive just because a team signs better offensive linemen. This season, Oakland also needs Murray to piece together an entire season and not wear down as he did in the second half of 2015. Through the first eight games, Murray received 132 carries and rushed for 630 yards. In the next eight, he ran the ball 134 times but recorded only 436 yards.
A second-half rushing average as paltry as Murray’s 3.3 yard/carry maybe would’ve been acceptable if he he had been contributing in other ways, but there was arguably no running back who did less with more as a receiver. Murray averaged 5.7 yards per catch, which ranked 40th out of the 49 backs who played in every game.
Finishing with the third-most carries in 2015 and one of only seven runners to surpass the 1,000-yard mark, Murray should lead the Raiders in touches this season, and it’s comforting for his prospects to know that he received 81.8 percent of his team’s runs inside the five-yard line last season. Still, there’s reason to believe that Oakland will look elsewhere at the position for help in the receiving game.
DeAndre Washington
The Raiders knew that they needed a complementary back behind Murray last year, and they tried in free agency to address that need. Unfortunately for them, both Roy Helu and Trent Richardson came up short. Hence the addition of Washington, who was taken in the fifth round of this year’s NFL draft.
Washington was given an opportunity to carry the ball nearly 20 times per game at Texas Tech last season, and he ran with it (no pun intended), averaging 6.4 yards per carry. How many carries he’ll actually see behind Murray remains a mystery — it probably won’t be many initially — but Washington’s true value lies in his receiving ability, which he amply displayed while in college, catching 30 passes his junior year and exceeding that mark with 41 as a senior. He’ll likely begin 2016 as Oakland’s third-down back, and DFS players looking for opportunistic value to start the year should keep a close eye on his touches. He’s not big, but at 5’8” and 204 lbs. he’s stout and heavy enough to be a lead back if given the opportunity.
Jalen Richard
Helu was recently released by the team with an injury settlement, and the undrafted rookie Richard now sits at No. 3 on the depth chart, needing to beat out only another rookie in order to be one Murray injury away from significant NFL touches. Head coach Jack Del Rio has historically preferred larger, imposing runners, but the 5’8″ and 207 lb. Southern Mississippi product has potential. In his final college season, he rushed for over 1,000 yards, amassed 14 touchdowns on the ground, caught 30 passes, scored another two touchdowns through the air, and even added another score as a kick returner. Four of his touchdowns rushing went for 50-plus yards. In a worst-case scenario, Richard should compete with Washington for the team’s change-of-pace role.
Taiwan Jones
Jones has failed to show that he’s capable of being a reliable back in the NFL. At one point a few years ago he was so far down the team’s depth chart that he switched to cornerback to have a better chance of sticking on the roster. He has been on the team for five years and still has failed to earn even 20 carries in any season. And yet Jones has been rather efficient with the touches he has received, and he entered the NFL as an early entrant who, though small, was amazingly athletic and productive at Eastern Washington. Even though he played college football at a small school, Jones was a fourth-round pick in 2011 on the strength of his 2,000-yard final season in which he averaged 8.5 yards per touch.
If he were to carve out even a small role in the offense, he could have some unexpectedly big games in 2016.
Marcel Reece
Reece gets carries only occasionally and/or when the team has no other healthy runners left, but as a receiver he’s one of the best backs in the league, even if he is ‘just’ a fullback. Since 2010, the wide receiver-to-fullback convert has turned 302 targets into 203 receptions, 1,995 yards, and 12 touchdowns. That’s strong receiving production out of the backfield, and the odds are decent that whoever earns the No. 2 running back job will need to contend with Reece for targets. And given that Reece is an underrated runner (as evidenced by his 4.6 yards/carry average), it’s possible that Reece will serve as the de facto No. 2 running back on the team in 2016, just as he has for much of the last six years. Of course, he has averaged 6.47 DraftKings points per game in the last six years. While he’s crucial for the Raiders, his applicability in DFS remains minimal at best, barring an injury to Murray and/or the occasional big receiving game.
Jamize Olawale
Only the Raiders would think that it’s a good idea to roster two big-bodied college receivers who 1) now play fullback, 2) might be the best running backs on their team, and 3) don’t touch the ball enough.
Wide Receivers
Amari Cooper
Cooper burst onto the scene last year, showing immediate proficiency in his craft. Not only did he become the first Raiders rookie ever to reach 1,000 receiving yards, but he also hauled in 72 receptions, an NFL record for a 21-year-old wide receiver. He was especially relied on early, as Carr targeted him 10 times on average through the first four games of his career. Even so, his season was not without its fair share of problems, the most concerning being his lack of presence in the red zone.
Cooper received no red-zone targets in 62.5 percent of his performances last season and none at all in the first seven weeks of the year. A foot injury nearly caused him to end his season after Week 13, but that doesn’t explain why he was obsolete inside the 20-yard line to begin his rookie campaign. It does, however, explain why he tailed off in the last quarter of the season.
He finished third in red-zone targets on his own team with eight, even though he finished second among Raiders wideouts with 761 snaps, 232 more than fellow wideout Seth Roberts. It’s very likely that a player of his caliber will receive more red-zone targets as he becomes even more established as the team’s No. 1 receiver in his second season.
Michael Crabtree
Crabtree nearly doubled Cooper in red-zone targets last season, leading Oakland’s receiving corps with 15. In fact, with Cooper’s salary pricing him as the clear No. 1 wide receiver right out of the gate, Crabtree by far provided the better value of the two last season.
Under normal circumstances, there would be no reason to think that Crabtree’s production last season would regress this year. But if the Raiders were to attempt fewer passes, Crabtree (and not Cooper) would likely be the receiver to lose most of the targets, as the younger, more explosive player (even with his injury) outproduced Crabtree by 148 yards receiving last year despite being targeted 16 fewer times. The first five weeks of 2016 should go a long way in clarifying Crabtree’s potential for the season.
Seth Roberts
As an undrafted small-school 24-year-old rookie, Roberts flashed in the final six games of 2015 and essentially won No. 3 duties for the Raiders this upcoming season. He averaged a +4.15 Plus/Minus at DraftKings in that span, gaining the confidence of his quarterback. If Cooper or Crabtree were to miss games in 2016, it’s likely that Roberts would see a greatly enhanced role in the offense and share of targets, as he last season impressively converted six of his 11 red-zone targets into scores.
Andre Holmes
Holmes re-signed with Oakland for $3 million dollars this offseason. Although he’ll likely be treated as depth to start the year, he has shown flashes in the past two seasons that would lead one to believe that he could be useful if needed. He’s only one year removed from hauling in 47 catches for Oakland — in 2014 he averaged 4.25 receptions for 74.5 yards and a touchdown per contest over a memorable four-game stretch — and in his senior year at Hillsdale he dominated his opponents with a 104-1,300-11 stat line. He’s big and he has upside — but we’ve probably seen the 28-year-old receiver at his best.
Nathan Palmer
Palmer is a typical Raiders depth receiver. He’s a blazing fast receiver — he ran a 4.34-second 40-yard dash at his 2012 pro day, but did relatively little as an undergraduate and in his four years since entering the NFL he has been targeted only four times. He caught one of these targets . . . for -4 yards . . . and behind him on the depth chart are five rookies who barely had college careers. Oakland might have the worst wide receiver depth in the NFL.
Tight Ends
Clive Walford
Oakland is reportedly high on Walford and hoping to expand the 6’4” and 250 lb. second-year tight end’s role moving forward. He seems especially likely to begin the season as Oakland’s No. 1 tight end since the Raiders are actively shopping his competition. Walford came on strong at the end of 2015, when he averaged 5.2 targets over the Raiders’ final five games. It will be interesting to see how he’s used at the start of the year since he and Roberts found their footing and were targeted similarly in the same time frame last year. There probably will not be enough targets to go around for both of them to be fantasy options.
Mychal Rivera
Rivera failed to start a single game in 2015, but he was initially Oakland’s primary receiving tight end because Walford was slowly recovering from knee and hamstring injuries suffered in the preseason. Rivera’s snaps decreased over the last five games, as he averaged 12 fewer snaps than Walford in that time. The best-case scenario for Rivera is that he’s released outright or traded to a team in need at his position, perhaps a team that recognizes him as only one year removed from a 58-534-4 season. If kept around, he’ll be forced to fight for his spot on Oakland’s roster with second-year undrafted free agent Gabe Holmes, a former basketball player whom the Raiders liked enough to promote to their 53-man roster so that he wouldn’t be poached off their reserve list.
Lee Smith
Smith led Raiders tight ends in snaps last season, but only because of his above-average run blocking abilities. Per PFF, Lee finished 2015 with the 12th-highest Run Block Grade among tight ends. He’ll probably once again see a lot of snaps in 2016 because of his utility as a blocker. Regardless, he averages less than one target per game. Nothing to see here.
Two-Minute Warning
The Raiders are in a precarious situation, in that it’s possible that they’ll be a far better team but worse for fantasy. They averaged only the 24th-most plays per game last season, so just imagine what a newfound focus on the running game would do to their pace. Even their first five (relatively easy) weeks are problematic: Per Warren Sharp, three of their matchups in the season’s first month are played at 10 AM PT, so their ‘body clocks’ will be off. They’re also forced to play a prime-time ‘home’ game in Mexico rather than in Oakland.
What’s worse is that Carr and Cooper last season averaged their worst Plus/Minus values against the AFC West, which accounts for five of Oakland’s final 11 games this season. If the Raiders falter even in the slightest against the weaker portion of their schedule, their current 8.5-win total will seem like a dirty joke.
