The Raiders had one clear objective entering the 2023 NFL Draft; get better on the defensive line. Last season, Maxx Crosby and Chandler Jones played nearly 2,000 combined snaps and rarely came off the field. The Raiders had to find ways to limit their snaps and improve the overall talent on the defensive line.
In a recent article by Gordon McGuinness of Pro Football Focus, he took a look at the most improved defensive lines in the NFL after the draft. That list included the Raiders as they added three top-end players to that unit. Here is what McGuinness had to say about the improvement on the defensive line:
Both Tyree Wilson and Byron Young were reaches, according to the PFF big board, but Wilson was still among the 32 best prospects in this class. He looks the part, and while the consistency wasn’t there at Texas Tech, he did win 22.3% of his pass-rush snaps in 2022. Young produced a 74.6 pass-rush grade and a 75.6 run-defense grade in 2022.
Las Vegas closed out its draft with Nesta Jade Silvera out of Arizona State, an interior defender who recorded a defensive stop on 7.5% of his run-defense snaps last season.
The expectation is that Wilson will be the team’s third defensive end, but the Raiders will use him as much as a starter. But as for Young and Silvera, they should both compete for snaps as rookies as run defenders.
Time will tell just how much the Raiders have improved on the defensive line, but there is no doubt that they’ve made a big effort to improve that unit this offseason.
