Raiders Get Clear Brock Bowers Message Before Jaguars Game
The Las Vegas Raiders have only had a fully healthy Brock Bowers for one game this season, their Week 1 matchup against the New England Patriots. Since then, he’s been dealing with a knee injury.
Bowers tried to play through it, wearing a brace, but the coaching staff eventually shut him down for a couple of weeks to allow him to heal. After the bye week, the young tight end
With Bowers potentially back, former Raiders running back Rashad Jennings stated that the Georgia product’s return, especially healthy, changes the entire makeup of the Las Vegas offense.
“I expect 89 back in the fold that it opens up the offense and we get to continue to oil and grease down that engine as much as we were doing from the
“I think it opens up the middle of the field. It opens up the backfield because now you have to count linebackers; they can’t just peel their ears back and blitz, they have to be worried about what’s going on in the deep middle. Tampa 2 opens up the run. It helps [Ashton] Jeanty. It softens the line. Everything happens because of how great Brock Bowers is. And I think the system is kind of built around him silently.”
Jaguars Are Well Aware of Raiders’ Brock Bowers
With potentially their top offensive weapon on the field for Week 9, Jaguars head coach Liam Coen shared his thoughts on facing the young Raiders star.
“I think you look at last year and early in the season,“ Coen told reporters about preparing to potentially face Bowers. “The first play of the season against the Patriots, they got him the ball on the very first play. When he’s healthy and available, he’s someone they definitely want to get the ball in his hands.
“We’ve got to make sure we understand where he is because he’s in the hip at tight end, he’s in an inline stance, he’s in the slot, he’s out at one. They want to move him around as the weapon that he is. I think we don’t want to say overprepare, but definitely lean more toward expecting them to get him going.”
Pete Carroll Talks Tyler Lockett Joining the Raiders
Bowers will have a new teammate on offense. On October 27, Las Vegas confirmed the addition of veteran wide receiver Tyler Lockett, reuniting him with head coach Pete Carroll and quarterback Geno Smith.
“High hopes for him and high hopes for us that we can make a good connection here, ” Carroll said on the latest episode of “1 on 1.“ “It’s a lot to ask a guy to jump in and be a regular player in a
“He’s a marvelous football player and a tremendous person; he’s one of the real natural ball players—he’s got great sense and feel and has always demonstrated that. Geno knows him really well. They’ve played together for quite some time, and there’s a chemistry between them that maybe can give us a little edge that we haven’t had with the younger guys who have been playing. We’ll see what happens and hold out good hopes for this to help us.”
Unfortunate reality might be setting in for Harrison Brunicke
The Pittsburgh Penguins dropped their Saturday matinee to the Winnipeg Jets 5-2 in which they started slow and could never recover in time. But there was more than just a slow start and a defeat to one of the Western Conference's best teams, that was a tough pill to swallow.
The Penguins will have to make a tough decision soon on if they should send 19-year-old defenseman Harrison Brunicke back to his junior team or keep him in the NHL. But after Saturday's game, it feels like that decision might have been made already.
In the contest, Brunicke just generally looked lost in his own zone and was the direct cause of the Jets second goal of the game which came early in the first period. Brunicke was doing his best to block a cross-crease pass and did not get his stick down in time. So, Jets forward Brad Lambert had a backdoor tap-in to make it 2-0 Jets early in the first.
Defenseman like Brunicke are going to want to do everything they can to get their sticks down and in position to block the cross-crease pass. Brunicke did not and the result showed. He also did not have inside positioning on Lambert so Lambert was able to box him out and score the goal.
It definitely seems like with the way head coach Dan Muse has been scratching Brunicke and playing him every now and then, that sending him back to his junior team is becoming inevitable. That kind of load management does not bode well for his chances of staying with the Penguins.
It might be ideal for him to get one more year in juniors and then be fully ready next season. That is for Muse and general manager Kyle Dubas to decide, but the answer seems like it might be in the cards for Brunicke.
