Las Vegas Raiders tight end Brock Bowers weighed in on the signing of QB Kirk Cousins, and he praised the move.
We haven’t heard a lot from many of the Las Vegas Raiders about the signing of new quarterback Kirk Cousins, but they’re starting to chime in now. The recently rescinded Maxx Crosby trade basically blotted out the sun when it comes to Raiders publicity lately, and if it wasn’t about Crosby, the media focus was all about quarterback Fernando Mendoza.
But tight end Brock Bowers weighed in on what Cousins brings to the table, and he had high praise for the quarterback, according to Mike Florio of Pro Football talk via Sam Warren of The Athletic. Bowers comments were on the generic side, but the very fact that he weighed in speaks volumes given the tight end’s experience last year with the ill-fated Pete Carroll regime.
Specifically, Bowers said it seems like Cousins has “been there for years” because he already seems to know everybody. This makes sense given that Cousins could be the NFL’s version of Kevin Bacon—I.e., name somebody in the league, and it wouldn’t take many names to find a guy who’s known a guy who knows Cousins once you start in on the “six degrees of separation” exercise.
More tangibly, Bowers also said it’s brought what he described as “calm” to the effort to learn the new playbook. This makes sense, too, especially in light of the stories from last year that offensive coordinator Chip Kelly didn’t even know the playbook before he was fired in the middle of the season.
Even more important, Cousins has genuine NFL bona fides as a quarterback, and he comes in with lots of them. It’s easy to make snarky comments about Cousins’ history of getting paid as a .500 quarterback (raises hand), but the new Raiders quarterback does know how to run an offense, and he’s seen so many of them that he has a much better idea than most QBs about what will work and what won’t.
“It’s definitely helpful to have that presence,” Bowers said.
The proof will or won’t happen on the field, though, and that’s where Bowers has some decent bona fides of his own. He was a breakout player in his rookie year who caught over 100 passes, but last year was basically a lost year for him as he hurt his knee in the Raiders opening game, and what was thought to be a “tweak” ended up being a fairly serious injury that made Bowers close to a non-entity.
He’s way better than that, and it will be up to Cousins and Kubiak to get Bowers back to the level he played at as a rookie.