THE KEY TO THE RAIDERS SEASON Lies With *Tre Tucker* and *Jakorian Bennett*

Coming into this season, I was worried about two key positions that the Raiders really didn't address in the draft or free agency, and I think we can all agree those positions were wide receiver three and cornerback two. They were going to rely on rookies last year, Jacorian Bennett and Trey Tucker, and I was apprehensive. I'm not going to lie to you. And then I heard decent things about both Jacorian Bennett and Trey Tucker in OTAs, and then I heard not great things about both of them in training camp. So needless to say, I was curious coming into this first preseason game if they were going to start and how well they were going to play, especially Trey Tucker knowing that Devante Adams was not going to be there, Trey Tucker was going to be the wide receiver two. And after one preseason game, I'm already ready to declare that these two are going to start as long as they are healthy. Jacorian Bennett in his limited time, and limited is very key, made some key stops, played some great coverage, tackled well, and broke up that would-be fourth down that got us the ball back and held the first-team defense, kept them, the Vikings, from scoring. Trey Tucker into the ballgame, running routes perfectly, securing every pass, getting open a la Henry Ruggs, looks like him with that number 11, but Trey Tucker looks stronger, he looks leaner, he looks more confident. The first person I'd like to talk about is Jacorian Bennett. And before we continue, make sure you're hitting that sub button, we're trying to get to 10,000 subs before the new league year, we gotta make a final push here, we got about a month to do it before week one, Chargers against the Raiders, can we get to 10K? About 70% of the people that watch my videos are not yet subscribed, but they keep coming back, we call them lurkers, stop lurking, hit that sub button, if you like me, if you keep watching me, just hit it, and then you can see me all the time. If he can solidify himself as a cornerback too, our defense does not have a weak spot. They have spots that could be better, like safety's good, it's not great, but it's very good. Linebacker is solid, obviously our defensive line, with Wilkins, Adam Butler who was starting, Kuntz, Crosby, and then Tyree Wilson coming in every now and again. That's the strength of the team, people are like, how are these cornerbacks gonna do? And we already saw, Jack Jones, I think he's living up to the hype of that CB1, he picked off J.J. McCarthy, vanilla defense, guess it was a little too vanilla for ya, J.J. McCarthy. By the way, I propose that we call J.J. McCarthy Vanilla Ice from now on, ice, ice, baby. Stop, collaborate, and listen, Jack Jones is back with a brand new addition, pick you off, hold the ball tightly, Corian Bennett, CB2 is rightly, I don't know where I'm going with this, I'm gonna stop. So we know we've got Nate Hobbs locking the slot down, one of the best slot corners, tackling corners in the National Football League. We know we've got the defensive line to end our defensive line. We know we've got linebackers who are gonna fly around to make plays, like Spillane and Diablo. We know we've got two bona fide solid safeties in Epson Merrick. We did not know if we're gonna need to go get an Adori Jackson or Stephon Gilmore to be that CB2, and now after one preseason game, again, going up against some starters and some backups, he wasn't exactly guarding Justin Jefferson, Corian Bennett played well enough for me to at least give him a chance. That doesn't mean necessarily that I wanna just roll in with these two and that's it. We could still sign an Adori Jackson to push JB to really earn that starting spot, and if he struggles or if somebody gets hurt, an Adori Jackson or a Stephon Gilmore can come in and take the place and fill in those shoes, right? But for right now, I think this defense, as of right now, is holeless. It is the opposite of holy. It's got no holes. Every single position you would want has a little bit of depth, has a little bit of grit, has that Patrick Graham style, flying around and making plays, and the defense wasn't great as a whole in this first game. But they didn't game plan, and also, they didn't let up a score in two possessions. So if they're not great and they're still not scoring on us, I think that's all you need to see. Trey Tucker. Now look. Okay, is this the... Yeah, this is Jacobi Meyers. Okay, right here. Pressure in his face. This is where I believe Minshew would either drift out here to the left, run around here, blah, blah, blah, toward... If you can't see my cursor, it's around the left side of the 40. Michael Mayer, Trey Tucker. I think he'd run around here in this little area, or he'd step up here, try to run for the first down, might make it, might not. But instead, Aiden O'Connell, this whole time, keeps his eyes down the field. He's got someone right here, but he's going to take an even deeper play to Jacobi Meyers. That's a play right there where I don't think... I really don't think Gardner Minshew would have made that play. I think he would have tried to scramble for it, and maybe he gets it, but maybe he doesn't. I think that's the problem. I made a video hyping him up, and then I made a video talking him down because apparently he wasn't doing well in training camp. And guys, I cannot stress this enough. I cannot stress this enough. If he turns into 80% of what Henry Ruggs was, or what was going to be, right? This offense could be absolutely unstoppable. And as well as the quarterbacks played in the preseason game, they both held their own and played very well, right? This is why I was telling you, I don't really care, within reason, who is the quarterback for the Raiders. Because after we drafted Brock Bowers, and after what seems to be the emergence of a new weapon in Trey Tucker, don't even get me started with Dylan Laube's potential. I don't know how you stop us. I don't know how you stop us, and it doesn't matter who's throwing the football. I've said this before. It doesn't matter if it's Tom Brady, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Ryan Tannehill, Ryan Reynolds, me, you, people are going to be running wide open. And even without Devontae, Trey Tucker was wide open. Jacoby Myers was wide open. Brock Bower, wide open. Every single play that Aidan O'Connell or Gardner Minshew made, save for one or two pass attempts, the guys were wide open. That's why I've been saying, we don't need Steph Curry at the quarterback position. We need Chris Paul. We need John Stockton, Jason Williams, someone to just distribute the basketball, right? Get the ball to the playmakers, hike, look, open, bang. We don't need a hero. And that's why I'm kind of leading Aidan instead of Gardner, because Gardner has that hero syndrome, right? Hero ball, he wants to be the guy. Trey Tucker unlocks everything. Because teams right now are saying, well, Devontae, he's one of the best in the league. He could take you over the top, but he's not going to do that consistently enough, right? He doesn't run down the field every single play. Jacoby Myers is a great route runner. Brock Bower is Michael Mayer. That's a problem. We're going to play two safeties on top, force the quarterback to make the right reads. But now, if you have a Trey Tucker type that can run down the field and not only run down the field in a straight line, but he has every route on the route tree. He's getting open, dragging his feet, securing the football. Literally the sky, like the sky is literally the limit with this offense. It's going to make whoever plays quarterback for us look very good if they can just keep their head on straight and distribute the football. And the way that Luke Getzey has been utilizing these weapons, such as Trey Tucker so far, is absolutely eye-opening. And for someone who wasn't really opening up the playbook because you don't want to show your cards too soon, right, in the preseason of all times, he was able to mix it up enough to keep this defense of the Vikings on their toes, and Trey Tucker was open a lot. And DJ Turner actually caught a nice little touchdown. I like how every wide receiver on our team is growing their hair out to look exactly the same. I absolutely love that. It just shows the camaraderie of this team. I don't know if they did it on purpose, but Trey Tucker and DJ Turner both have long hair now. I don't remember them both having long hair. Anyway, it doesn't matter. DJ Turner, with the twos, caught a nice little touchdown pass. With Trey Tucker in that spot, he's going to be running those same routes. He's going to be open just like DJ Turner was going to be open. So for right now, I think the key to this team was who's going to be that ultra over-the-top option for us, and who's going to be that cornerback too. If we found both of them in last year's draft, number one, we're going to have to give Dave Ziegler a little bit of credit. And number two, a couple years from now, we're going to owe some people a lot of money. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. That's why ultimately I think it's important for Aiden to be the guy because if Aiden's the guy, we can keep him on this fourth round contract for this year, next year, and maybe the year after. Then extend them, fifth year, bang. If he turns out to be the guy, I'll tell you this much. If we can just get 18, 19, 19 to 11 quarterback range, I'm telling you, we're going to win a lot of games. I'm just telling you. We needed a CB2. We needed a WR3. That doesn't really roll off the tongue like CB2, but you get it. And we found them, it looks like. Now, I don't want to overreact from one game. I'm just going off of what I saw and what I heard in training camp. And also, I heard in training camp that the quarterback stunk and that Trey Tucker was actually a bust. And it turns out that once the lights are on, right, they're rocking and freaking rolling. I got to tell you, I think this is a massive overthink by a lot of people that are not involved with the organization that think that we're not going to be competitive this season and win a lot of games. I mean, some people think we're going to be competitive, but they don't think we're going to win a lot of games. I think it's a massive overthink. Ryan Tannehill was able to get to multiple, you know, AFC championships, or at least one AFC championship, made the playoffs for three seasons, was up in the AFC championship against Patrick Mahomes, right? These quarterbacks, Joe Flacco won a Super Bowl, right? Brock Purdy. Brock Purdy's a little bit better than those guys, but still. If you have just capable at the quarterback position, and you surround them with a great defense and game changers on offense, all I did in this video was talk about Jacoby Myers and Trey Tucker, and tell me you aren't hyped through the moon for this season to start. Seriously. I didn't mention in terms of like making an impact like Devontae or Max Crosby or Zeus or Diablo or Epsilon, I didn't mention these blue chip guys. I mentioned mid-round picks from last year that seem to be grabbing the bull by the horns Antonio Pierce style. I think it's a massive, massive oversight and overthink by the media. There isn't some like conspiracy for them to talk us down, or for them to talk down on us. It's just they don't see us as a contender right now. And I'll tell you this much, we looked better than the Chargers did offensively. Again, it's just a preseason. I'm just going off of what I see. I don't want to overhype it. I'm just trying to state things in a factual, logical way. I think you guys appreciate that about me and I'm trying to continue to do that. So if you like what you see here, hit that like button. Comment below. Are you excited for the season? I am. Are you? Join the Discord. It's free. Link is in the description below. It's a big group chat with all of us subscribers. We're talking about stuff all the dang time. Join that Patreon, patreon.com slash allaboardraiders. You get early access to videos, your name at the end of the credits, exclusive copyright content that I can't post on this channel, so I have to upload it unlisted to Patreon. My video where I talked about Gardner, Minchu, and Aidan O'Connell and I broke down the film is up on Patreon, $5 a month. You can join and then leave whenever you want. You can join once, watch a video, bounce. I don't care. It's up to you. But if you don't want to do that, that's okay. Please be sure to subscribe. It is free after all. No charge to you. I love you guys and I'll see you next time.