The Las Vegas Raiders have been looking for a downfield receiver for some time now, and Tre Tucker stepped up.
The Las Vegas Raiders were supposedly facing an uphill battle to score points against the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday with star tight end Brock Bowers sitting out the game with a knee injury, but instead the opposite happened as the Raiders got the last two touchdowns of the game with a dominant fourth-quarter performance.
The receiver who caught the touchdown passes from quarterback Kirk Cousins was Cody White, but let’s not bury the lede here. The big story was reciever Tre Tucker, who posted a stat line that looked a lot like what you’d like to get from your No. 1 receiver as he caught five passes for 119 yards and a touchdown.
These weren’t dink-and-dunk throws, either. Cousins went down the fied twice to find Tucker, with both throws going for at least 40 yards. That’s the kind of big-play capability the Raiders weren’t expecting from their receivers, and GM John Spytek and coach Klint Kubiak have taken all kinds of criticism for not drafting or trading for a top receiver.
So is Tucker the guy? Maybe, but it’s too soon to tell. The speed is definitely there, but the ball skills were something of an unknown coming into the season, mostly because the offense was so bad last year that the collective awfulness prevented any kind of real evaluation from happening.
Tucker did catch a 19-yard throw in the Raiders’ 27-13 win in Week 1, but his performance against the Chargers was a big step up. The Raiders are playing quality football so far, which is encouraging, but the Chargers game that was supposed to be a big test turned out to be the opposite of that.
The issue that surfaced Sunday was that Cousins took some serious shots, especially in the second half when the Raiders tried to open up the offense. Las Vegas does have rookie quarterback Fernando Mendoza waiting in the wings, but an injury to Cousins is not the way the Raiders want this situation to go.
The running game that worked so effectively againsts the Dolphins was a non-factor against LA, and it’s hard to know if the success of receivers like White and Dareke Young represents a step up given the relative lack of prodution from Jack Bech and Jalen Nailor so far. The truly good news is that Tucker showed that he might be capable of stepping up and into a role that’s open and waiting to be filled.
