If there were any good feelings about the Las Vegas Raiders on the heels of edging out the rival Broncos in Week 1, they quickly dissipated in Week 2 with the trip to Buffalo.
The Bills put a complete hurting on the Raiders this past Sunday, beating them into the ground in a 38-10 drubbing. Frankly, there weren't many areas outside of Davante Adams that looked good for this team. And it's clear that changes need to be made for the Las Vegas depth chart moving forward if things are going to turn around.
Specifically, the Raiders should seriously consider benching these players, either for the short- or long-term, in order to shake things up and get underperformers off of the field for a team that can't afford that.
Raiders who deserve to be benched, No. 3: Bilal Nichols, DT
When you looked at the defensive front for the Raiders coming into the 2023 season, it could've gone either way. There were several players, Bilal Nichols included, who have flashed at times in their careers, but who needed to bounce back this year for Las Vegas to field a formidable defense.
Through two games, it has certainly gone the wrong way for Nichols and, really, the defense at large.
Nichols was absolutely eaten alive by the Bills, a team that has struggled to construct a solid rushing attack in recent years, in the ground game in Week 2. He allowed numerous chunk plays from Josh Allen, James Cook, and Damien Harris and offered little resistance as a space-eater on the interior.
Over his first two games, Nichols has graded out as the 109th-best interior defensive lineman in the NFL by PFF (subscription required). Only 124 players have qualified with enough snaps, highlighting how bad it's been with Nichols and the Raiders.
The difficult part with benching Nichols is that he's already involved in a rotation and no one on the Raiders defensive line has been good. That being said, giving more snaps to rookie Byron Young to allow him to develop or, at the very least, prove they need to reasess after the 2023 season is a more favorable option than a veteran like Nichols struggling mightily out there.
Raiders who deserve to be benched, No. 2: Tyree Wilson, EDGE
On the flip side of the conversation about not putting a veteran out there to struggle, we have seventh-overall pick Tyree Wilson. Two games into his NFL career, the former Texas Tech star who many people believed the Raiders over-drafted at No. 7 has not given the doubters any reason to think otherwise to this point.
Over the first two weeks of his rookie season, Wilson has registered just two total tackles. In 47 pass rush snaps, per PFF, he's only managed one pressure to this point. That's why the rookie has graded out as the third-worst qualified edge rusher for PFF through Week 2.
Given that he missed a substantial amount of training camp and the end of his college career with an injury, it stands to reason that Wilson would be rusty. At the same time, it hurts the Raiders and might not be all that beneficial to the rookie to consistently feed him to the wolves and get eaten each week -- which is currently happening.
The bizarre absence of Chandler Jones complicates the possibility of benching Wilson right now as the depth on the edge is lacking behind Maxx Crosby and the rookie. At the same time, for the best outlook long-term with Wilson, it may behoove the Raiders to give him more time to adjust to NFL speed in practice in a rotational role or as a secondary option than to give him the workload he's clearly not capable of affecting games with right now.
Raiders who deserve to be benched, No. 1: Josh Jacobs, RB
If Josh Jacobs wanted to prove a point to the Raiders about paying running backs, he's doing about as bad of a job as humanly possible through the team's 1-1 start.
Put simply, Jacobs has been a virtual non-factor in the ground game. In the win over the Broncos, he got 19 carries, but managed just 48 yards, good for only 2.5 yards per carry. He somehow made that substantially worse against the Bills, rushing nine times for -2 yards. Yes, he lost 0.2 yards per carry on average.
Of course, there are plenty of factors to consider with Jacobs. For one, the interior of the Raiders offensive line has been atrocious over the first two weeks, which naturally hinders the run game. Moreover, he was an effective pass-catcher in Buffalo, hauling in 5-of-6 targets for 51 yards against the Bills.
In addition to that, Jacobs' training camp holdout, though it eventually subsided, robbed him of time to adjust back to NFL speed and get comfortable with any new pieces in the offense. That could also be what we're seeing.
But the totality of the situation is that we're seeing a running back who just isn't getting his job done right now. With Zamir White continuing to show some promise in limited work (five carries for 24 yards thus far in 2023), perhaps it would make sense for McDaniels to bench Jacobs in order to send a message -- and while also getting a look at White as a potential piece for the offense's future.
