Oakland Raiders 2014 NFL Draft Wrap-up

Dec 22, 2013; San Diego, CA, USA; Oakland Raiders fan Wayne Mabry (Violator) reacts in the second half against the San Diego Chargers at Qualcomm Stadium. The Chargers won 26-13. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

After months upon months upon months of planning, evaluating, analyzing, doubting, confirming, re-evaluating, and speculating, the draft is finally over and done with. With all of the picks selected and most likely to be signed in the coming weeks, we (as analysts), must go out and analyze every single pick and go through where teams may or may not have gone wrong in their individual selections and list some possible solutions or corrections.

In this article I will be reviewing the team with the fifth overall pick: the Oakland Raiders. For the Raiders last season, everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. Their former draft pick in Terrelle Pryor played well during his first few games, completing 68.5% of his passes for 845 yards and 4 touchdowns. Everything seemed like it was going in the 2-2 Oakland Raider’s direction, until Pryor started missing throws and throwing interceptions. For the rest of his 2013 season, Pryor threw 9 interceptions while completing 45.3% of his throws. After the season was said and done, the Texans’ Matt Schaub was named the new starting QB of the Raiders as Pryor signed with the Seattle Seahawks as a backup. For the Raiders, a team plagued by bad draft picks (insert: JaMarcus Russel), this draft was a chance to make up for the that. In this wrap-up, I will be going through all of the Raiders’ selections, pointing out their strengths/weaknesses and seeing what they did correctly and what they did incorrectly.