Mailbag: What to expect from K’Lavon Chaisson?

We’re onto Week 2 as the Las Vegas Raiders face a tough road matchup against the Baltimore Ravens. The Raiders have also suffered some injuries and subsequently added a few new players to the roster/practice squad, giving us plenty to go over for this week’s mailbag.

Q: K’Lavon Chaisson. How did he go from a standout in college and a first-round pick to getting cut from practice squads at 25? Does he have any juice?

A: I know this sounds like a convenient hindsight take, but I never thought Chaisson was a true “first-round talent”. He had plenty of potential coming out of LSU but was raw and, in my opinion, getting more buzz because he had a good run at the end of the Tigers’ National Championship season.

Chaisson’s production in college is a good example. He had 9.5 sacks in 46 career games with 4.5 coming in a three-game stretch when LSU was on a national stage; 1.5 versus Texas A&M (final regular season game), one against Georgia (SEC Championship) and two versus Oklahoma (CFP Semifinal). Outside of that run, he had five sacks with two coming against UT Chattanooga during his freshman season.

To me, Chaisson was a little overrated coming out of college because he played on a great team (arguably one of the best in College Football history) and people were paying more attention to his end-of-season run than his full body of work. That being said, I am surprised his NFL career has fallen off this quickly.

Maybe the Raiders and Rob Leonard can get something out of Chaisson’s untapped potential, but I wouldn’t count on it.

I’ll put it this way; the Carolina Panthers signed him in the offseason because they need edge help, especially with D.J. Wonnum beginning the year on PUP, and the Panthers are in a rebuilding process where they’re collecting young talent. However, Carolina cut the 25-year-old at the end of training camp and didn’t even keep him around on the practice squad.

Q: Will Tyree Wilson be moved by the deadline?

A: At this rate, I don’t think another team will want to give up much for Wilson. I know I mentioned toward the end of training camp the Raiders might be able to get something for him, but he’s injured again and two injuries in two years is going to scare a lot of teams off. If this latest ailment isn’t too severe, then things could change.

However, Las Vegas is so thin at defensive end right now the team can’t afford to give up someone else at the position.

Q: When does Amari Gainer start taking snaps from Divine Deablo?

A: If Deablo plays like he did in the season opener, he might (or should) get pulled from the starting lineup sooner rather than later. But Tommy Eichenberg is still ahead of Amari Gainer in the pecking order and Luke Masterson might be as well.

Granted, Eichenberg has to get healthy as he was inactive last Sunday, but he’s been a full participant in practice this week after being limited the week before. Also, Antonio Pierce said Friday that the Ohio State product will play this weekend. So, I think it will be a while before Gainer cracks the starting lineup, but I am excited for when/if he does.

Q: Is Luke Getsy legit underrated? He’s always scheming guys wide open and his QBs can’t handle the basics.

A: I think he is because I do like Getsy’s vertical passing attack to get guys open, like you mentioned. However, his short-passing concepts are pretty basic and his biggest flaw so far is that he struggles or takes too long to adapt to his quarterback’s skill set. That was the issue with the Bears and in the Raiders’ season opener.

That does give cannon fodder to both sides of the argument as Getsy can scheme guys open, but part of being a coach is adapting to your players and he’s lacking in that department. We’ll see if he adjusts moving forward but, in my opinion, I think he’s slightly underrated.

A: This is kind of the same question as the one above. I liked what Getsy does with the vertical passing game, but I do want to see him be better at calling plays that fit what Gardner Minshew does best; short-to-intermediate throws and get him on the move with more bootlegs.

A: I will say that I don’t think Minshew was the biggest problem in the season opener, but he does need to do a better job of pushing the ball down the field. He looked like a different player than what we saw in the preseason when he wasn’t afraid to let it rip. But, for whatever reason, he turned into checkdown Charlie last week and was scrambling when guys were open downfield.

As for why Minshew is playing and not O’Connell, O’Connell was the conservative one in the preseason and reportedly didn’t show much (if any) growth in training camp. So, Minshew’s performance last week was certainly frustrating. Marcus broke that down in the game review episode of Tape Don’t Lie below.

Ultimately, I think the Raiders’ quarterback of the future just isn’t on the roster right now. Maybe things change as the season goes on, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

A: More points! Lol.

Better run blocking and a more aggressive quarterback.

Cody Whitehair and Andre James were especially awful in Los Angeles and, as mentioned above, Minshew was too conservative while still making mistakes, most notably with the fumble on the backward pass. If a quarterback is going to make mistakes and turn the ball over, at least take shots down the field to try and make up for it.

A: Baring an absolute disaster this Sunday, I still think Minshew will get a chance to prove himself against the Panthers and Antonio Pierce will take it from there. Minshew wasn’t the biggest problem against the Chargers, he just didn’t do anything to help overcome the rest of the offense’s flaws.

Q: Was Thayer Munford Jr. getting help from backs and tight ends on passing downs? He seemed to have had a good day.

A: I consulted my colleague Marcus Johnson since he pays more attention to the offense and I focus more on the defense. Marcus said, “A couple of times but not much, honestly,” and the data backs that up. On the Raiders’ 41 pass snaps last week, running back Alexander Mattison had six snaps in pass protection and tight end Michael Mayer had just two, per Pro Football Focus.

Those were the only two non-offensive linemen to record snaps in pass protection, so Munford was on an island for most of the game and fared well with just one pressure allowed and a 69.5 pass-blocking grade. On the other hand, Whitehair and James were a different story…

A: Kolton Miller played better than what my initial reaction was, but he certainly wasn’t the rock in pass protection that he’s been in the past and the offensive line is going to need him to be this season given the other question marks up front. Outside of one sack, Dylan Parham played a pretty good game and Munford had a good performance in pass protection.

Surprisingly, Munford did struggle in the running game though. I don’t think it was necessarily this bad, but PFF did give him a 49.8 run-blocking grade and I wouldn’t pound the table to argue that he was much better than that, if that makes sense. In other words, I don’t think Munford was as bad as Joe Alt (see below), but I’m not going to argue that he was good or even above average.

The biggest problems were Whitehair and James. Hopefully, this was just a bad day for James as he typically struggles against big nose tackles and Poona Ford ate his lunch. As for Whitehair, let’s hope Jackson Powers-Johnson gets healthy and is ready to go soon.

A: Zamir White will still get more carries as Alexander Mattison only had five rushes last week despite playing more. However, if the Raiders get down early and are throwing the ball, Mattison will have more touches since the coaching staff likes him in the passing game and his 31-yard touchdown last week accounted for 70 percent of the team’s scoring (lol, but it’s more sad than funny).

A: “Manhandled” is a stretch, but Joe Alt had a pretty good game in pass protection, even against Maxx Crosby.

That being said, Justin Herbert was getting the ball out quickly as he had a 2.59-second average time to throw, per PFF. For comparison, Herbert’s TTT last year was 2.79 and he’s never been below 2.6 seconds for a full season in his career. Pretty much every time the Raiders’ pass rush won, he immediately found his checkdown and dumped the ball off.

Also, what’s not being talked about is how Alt got worked in the running game. PFF gave him a 47.8 run-blocking grade and he lost several times, like on the rep against Christian Wilkins below.

A: I’ve said this a few times recently, I’m not signing off on giving up future assets for a 40-year-old self-absorbed quarterback who is coming off a torn Achilles!

That’ll do it for this week’s mailbag. Thank you all for submitting questions and, as your weekly reminder, if you’d like to have your questions answered in a future column, tweet them at me, @MHolder95, email them to [email protected] or look for our weekly call for questions on the site. The latter will continue to publish on Thursdays.