Las Vegas Raiders tight ends Harrison Bryant (84), Zach Gentry (88) and Michael Mayer (87) warm up during organized team activities at the Las Vegas Raiders Headquarters/Intermountain Health Performance Center in Henderson Tuesday, May 21, 2024.
Thursday, May 30, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Las Vegas Raiders tight end Brock Bowers (89) responds to a question from a reporter during rookie minicamp at the Raiders Headquarters/Intermountain Health Performance Center in Henderson Friday, May 10, 2024.
Michael Mayer was in for a mild surprise on the first night of the 2023 NFL Draft when his phone never rang with a call from a team to tell him he was being selected.
Coming off back-to-back All-American seasons at Notre Dame, Mayer was expected to be taken in the first round but fell to the second, where the Raiders were able to trade up and take him with the 35th overall pick.
He took the slip in stride, saying he was happy to end up in Las Vegas, where he showed flashes of potential late in his rookie season. Mayer had two touchdown catches down the stretch last year before missing the final three weeks of the season with a toe injury.
• Final voluntary offseason workout program: June 3-6
• Mandatory Minicamp: June 11-13
• Start of training camp: Mid-to-late July (exact date TBD)
• Preseason Week 1: at Minnesota Vikings, August 10
• Preseason Week 2: vs. Dallas Cowboys, August 17
• Preseason Week 3 vs. San Francisco 49ers, August 23
Training camp will be held in Costa Mesa, Calif., at the Jack Hammett Sports Complex this year. Preseason game tickets available starting at $95 at ticketmaster.com.
Then the real shocking draft-related call came when he was least expecting it—this April during the 2024 NFL Draft. New Raiders general manager Tom Telesco gave Mayer a heads-up that the team was using its first-round selection, 13th overall, on another tight end—Georgia’s Brock Bowers.
Mayer had some initial confusion about why the Raiders would bring in another highly touted player at his position, but said it quickly wore off and turned into excitement about what the pair could accomplish together.
“Who’s going to guard both of us?” Mayer said after the team’s second practice of the spring. “If you put a (line)backer (on us), put a small safety here, like, I’m a big body (and) Brock is a big body. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
The new Raiders’ coaching staff — including now-permanent head coach Antonio Pierce, offensive coordinator Luke Getsy and tight ends coach Luke Steckel — is hoping the pair create the type of mismatches Mayer described.
They might play the same position, but the 6-foot-4, 265-pound Mayer and the 6-foot-3, 240-pound Bowers have skill sets that should complement each other. Bowers is dynamic in the open field and set up to succeed on gadget-type plays while Mayer is more of a bruiser and threat over the middle.
They’re both years away from the NFL’s traditional prime—the 22-year-old Mayer is a year and a half older than Bowers — but may emerge as focal points of the Raiders’ offense ahead of schedule this fall.
There’s a chance they could wind up as vital of weapons as players like perennial All-Pro receiver Davante Adams and late-season breakout running back Zamir White.
“If you have two great tight ends, I think it’s really hard to match that personnel-wise in order to defend against the pass and the run,” Bowers said.
Few if any teams now have two tight ends as collegiately decorated as the Raiders, but the franchise will be moving more in line with the rest of the NFL if it uses them together as frequently as advertised.
Schemes with two tight ends and one running back — called “12 personnel” — have long eclipsed formations with one tight end and two running backs — “21 personnel” — as the second-most used offensive setup in the NFL. One tight end and one running back — “11 personnel” —r emains most teams’ base, but 12 personnel was used on 19.3% of snaps last season, the second-most ever since the league began tracking the data in 2016.
The Raiders were 24th in the league in only using two tight ends on 14.4% of plays last season. Getsy was with the Chicago Bears last year, however, and utilized two tight ends at the eighth-highest rate in the league at 23.5% of snaps.
The Atlanta Falcons ranked first with 12 personnel on 41.8% of snaps. The Raiders will probably sit somewhere in between the Bears’ and Falcons’ rate in the 2024-25 season.
“I think the most important thing is finding a way to maximize the type of guy that you have, figuring out what they do well,” Getsy said. “That’s the phase we’re in right now. We’re all trying to figure each other out.”
It shouldn’t take much work to figure out that the Raiders need both Bowers and Mayer to contribute in a major way if they want to improve on last year’s 8-9 season. Las Vegas used such high picks on both players that it would be a waste of resources if it can’t figure out how to get them to coexist on the field.
Bowers and Mayer say there will be no problem personality-wise with them getting along. Bowers was highly surprised himself on draft night when he became a Raider, in part because he knew the team already had Mayer — not to mention fellow veteran free agent tight end acquisition Harrison Bryant.
But tight ends are being used more than ever in the NFL, and the Raiders will now join in on the trend.
“We’re putting a lot of things in right now,” Mayer said. “We’re running a lot of stuff out there. Brock has been great so far. He’s been a great dude, eager to learn. It’s been great. We have a great tight end room.”
This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.