No one referred to Tom Telesco as “Trader Tom” in his 11 years as general manager with the Chargers.
Come Thursday night in his first draft with the Raiders, will circumstances induce Telesco to break out of his starchy past?
Daniel Jeremiah isn’t ruling out a bold double-move that brings the Raiders a highly graded right tackle and a potential franchise quarterback at a total cost of three or more draft chips.
It would be a “Viva Las Vegas” moment for the buttoned-down executive who began his GM’s career in San Diego, where he inherited Philip Rivers as his quarterback and John and Dean Spanos as his bosses.
“If you asked me what is the home run draft for the Raiders,” said Jeremiah, the former NFL scout and El Cajon product who’ll be calling his 12th draft for the NFL Network, “and you told me they got (Taliese) Fuaga with the 13th pick and came back in the bottom of the first round and got Michael Penix Jr., I’ll be on the set in Detroit tipping my cap to Tom Telesco and (coach) Antonio Pierce because that’s an ‘everything’s gone perfect’ type of draft for me.”
Fuaga plays right tackle, a spot where the Raiders once again look wobbly.
A lefty quarterback who led Washington to the national championship game last season, Penix will need a right tackle who protects his blind side and amps up the ground game.
If not Oregon State alum Fuaga, who’s Jeremiah’s No. 10 prospect, other worthy tackles could be had at 13, said the former scout.
Disclaimers abound.
The QB-needy Broncos and Vikings own the 11th and 12th picks.
Telesco isn’t accustomed to moving far within a draft.
Other teams will know the Raiders seek a quarterback and thus demand a higher price in draft capital if he tries to move up from 44, his second-round slot.
If Telesco were to get burned for being too cute, either by not landing Penix or forking over more draft capital than planned despite holding no surplus picks this year or next year, team owner Mark Davis may wonder why he hired him in January.
Mindful of the real-world risks, Jeremiah played it safe in his recent mock draft, pairing Telesco and Penix at 13.
Penix is an older prospect who’ll turn 24 next month and twice had reconstructive knee surgery, so why the fuss?
Jeremiah discerns a “huge talent gap” between the deep-throwing, mobile lefty and Raiders QBs Gardner Minshew and Aidan O’Connell.
“Penix has shown so much more ability,” said the former Eagles, Ravens and Browns scout, who ranks Penix 33rd overall and behind his fourth QB in this class, Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy, who’s 20th.
A comparable mystery to Penix’s NFL aptitude is Telesco’s ability to pull off tricky moves that entail moving far up or down the draft. With the Chargers, he never traded down. Only once did he invest multiple draft chips in a player, trading the 2020 second-round pick (No. 37) and third-round pick (No. 71) for the No. 23 selection to take linebacker Kenneth Murray. It proved a large overpay.
Adroit with the up-down joystick, NFL talent men such as Brett Veach (Chiefs) and Les Snead (Rams) pulled off Draft Night-related trades that furthered construction of teams that would win at least one Super Bowl. The likes of Veach, who combined with coach Andy Reid to rise 17 spots and draft Patrick Mahomes, and others such as the Eagles’ Howie Roseman and the Ozzie Newsome-trained Ravens GM Eric DeCosta seemed dialed into the draft DNA of the other 31 teams, reflecting well on their industry knowledge and game-theory skills.
The Raiders and other clubs can’t expect to win big without such nimbleness, notwithstanding the cemented-into-place Bengals reaching a recent Super Bowl after losing enough games to draft Joe Burrow first and Ja’Marr Chase fifth.
Citing not only the potential reward of trading up from 44 to get Penix, Jeremiah noted also the appeal of trading down to get him, if possible.
“In an ideal world,” he said, “you’d trade back, get some extra picks, and if nobody else takes him, you get him and a little bonus there.”
The Raiders have fielded bad or mediocre teams in most years since their 2002 team’s run to the Super Bowl in Mission Valley.
Among the ’02 leaders were journeyman quarterback Rich Gannon and San Diego’s Lincoln Kennedy, an All-Pro right tackle that year.
Maybe it works out for them this time around, beginning Thursday night.
