The Las Vegas Raiders’ roster needed some extra talent at wide receiver heading into free agency, leading the Raiders to sign Jalen Nailor from the Minnesota Vikings to a three-year, $35 million contract. To get to know him better, Silver and Black Pride reached out to our friends at the Daily Norseman, and Christopher Gates was kind enough to answer a few questions about Nailor for Raider Nation.
Q: What are Nailor’s biggest strengths and weaknesses?
A: When you talk about Jalen Nailor’s strengths and weaknesses, one of his bigger strengths is his speed. His nickname is “Speedy,” after all. He’s the sort of player who has the ability to stretch the field if that’s what the Raiders are going to ask him to do. He’s also gotten significantly better at route running during his time in Minnesota and can get decent separation most of the time. He also has above-average hands and makes more than his share of contested catches.
For some reason, he seemed to be the only Vikings receiver last season who had any sort of real chemistry with J.J. McCarthy. I’m not entirely sure why that was, but McCarthy and Nailor had some very nice connections last season.
As far as his weaknesses, he’s not the most physical of receivers and he has issues with getting off of press coverage at times. He also has a reputation of being injury-prone, but I think that stems more from his college days at Michigan State than anything he’s shown in the NFL. He only had one season with the Vikings where he dealt with any significant injuries. That was back in 2023 when he had a hamstring issue early in the season and some concussion issues later in the year. He played in all 17 games each of the last two seasons, so maybe the injury bug is completely behind him.
Q: Why did the Vikings let Nailor leave in free agency?
A: Nailor’s departure in free agency was almost entirely financial.
The Vikings backed up the money truck for Justin Jefferson a couple of seasons ago, and they have a decision to make soon on Jordan Addison’s fifth-year option and a potential long-term extension for him as well. With that sort of potential money going towards the wide receiver room, there just wasn’t going to be enough money left to give Nailor the sort of deal that he was going to demand in free agency.
It would have been nice to keep Nailor around as a WR3, but he’s at the point in his career where he obviously feels that he deserves an opportunity to be more than that, and he just wasn’t going to have that in Minnesota.
Q: Nailor’s production in Minnesota over the last four years is underwhelming. Do you think that says more about who he is as a player or the result of competing for targets with guys like Justin Jefferson? Building on that, do you see Nailor as someone who is still growing as an NFL player?
A: I just think there weren’t enough opportunities for him in Minnesota, honestly. When you have a pair of receivers like Jefferson and Addition in the room already, there just aren’t going to be enough wide receiver targets to go around a lot of the time. Nailor probably deserved more targets than he got, but he was just sort of stuck where he was.
I don’t think that Nailor has hit his ceiling as an NFL player by any stretch, and I think he’s going to be the sort of player who can help a quarterback like Fernando Mendoza in the early stages of his development as a reliable, consistent target.
I don’t think Nailor’s underwhelming numbers are a reflection of his talent by any means. I think they’re more of a reflection of the situation that he was in on the Vikings’ depth chart. Now that he’s presumably going to be in a higher spot on the Raiders’ wide receiver depth chart, he will flourish accordingly.
Q: According to Pro Football Focus, Nailor has a near 50/50 split between snaps as a slot and outside receiver. Is he better at one spot than the other?
A: I think his best spot would be as more of an outside receiver, where he can use his speed a little bit more to open things up. He’s more speedy than shifty, in my opinion, so I’m not sure if I’d see him in as much of a slot role as the Vikings used him in. I think the Raiders would be better off using him as more of an outside threat and using other players to man the slot positions. He could probably be fine if you had to use him as a slot guy, but if you have better options there, then keeping him on the outside is the best way to use him, in my opinion.
Q: How is Nailor as a leader/teammate, and what type of person is he off the field?
A: To be honest, I didn’t really hear a whole lot about Nailor as far as a leadership role or anything like that. Again, I think that stems from the fact that one of the guys on the team who plays the same position as he does is one of the clear leaders of the team and the face of the franchise, so he probably got overshadowed in that regard. He didn’t cause any off-field problems or anything like that.
The only impressions I’ve ever heard or gotten from him are that he’s a solid, decent guy both on and off the field. He’ll probably be asked to step into more of a leadership role now in Las Vegas, particularly as a potential mentor to a young quarterback, and I don’t see any reason to think that he wouldn’t be able to handle such a role if asked.
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