By Kirk Kern
The Las Vegas Raiders could go in a number of different directions when the NFL draft kicks off on Thursday. The Raiders have the seventh overall selection in the first round and they could trade up, trade down or take the pick.
And if they take the pick, that selection could go a number of different ways. They could take a defensive back, rush end or even a quarterback defending on how the previous six selections go.
No matter which direction it all plays out, Raiders general manager Dave Ziegler is feeling the pressure with getting not only that pick right, but also the other 11 selections the team is currently slated to make.
“I want to get 12 contributing players,” Ziegler said in a pre-draft news conference on Friday. “So yeah, we put that pressure on ourselves and I put that pressure on myself and Josh [McDaniels] puts the pressure on himself, and just as a scouting department we feel that pressure in a good way, because I think that pressure drives you.
“When you’re meeting for 15-straight days, there’s a monotony that you can let grow in, but I think that pressure, that motivation to get it right, that motivation to improve the team, that’s the pressure that that keeps us pushing and keeps us focused and dialed in.”
One thing that won’t happen, however, will be any big disagreement between Ziegler and his head coach, McDaniels. Ziegler said the two have worked together in the past few weeks to iron out any differences the two key decisionmakers have.
“We won’t have a situation where we’re actually in the draft room and a pick is there and we’re on two different pages,” Ziegler said. “We’ll have ironed all those things out prior to getting to that point. And so, there’ll be some debates to get to that point on certain things, but we’ll work through all that by the time we get to the draft we’ll be ready to go.”
But that doesn’t mean there is already a final decision made on who’s name they will write up on the card to send up to the league with their pick. Ziegler said the Raiders will consider all options, even if it means picking a quarterback despite recently signing Jimmy Garappolo to a three-year, $72.75 million contract that includes $45 million guaranteed.
“I think we’re open to having competition at the quarterback position and every other position on the roster,” Ziegler said. “I think that we’re never going to close the door on that. Just philosophically the way that Josh and I believe that we’re going to build this roster is any opportunity that we have a chance to improve the competition, and if that means it’s at the quarterback position and there’s a competition there, we think that brings out the best of our players.
“And so, I think that’s why we wouldn’t close the door. I talked about some of the different reasons we wouldn’t close the door on that specific position, but I don’t think we’d ever look at it necessarily and say, ‘Hey, just because this one player is here at this position that we have to cancel ourselves out of drafting another high-level player at any position on the roster.’”
