The Raiders who cut Alex Leatherwood highlight the failures of Jon Gruden and Mike Mayock’s regime

The Raiders free Alex Leatherwood on Tuesday, just one year after taking him with the 17th overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. Cutting the draft out of the first round after just one season is an amazing move—except that with the Raiders draft picks for the Jon Gruden/Mike Mayock era, they’re in Actually not a big surprise.

Gruden was the Raiders’ head coach and Mayock’s general manager for three drafts, 2019-2021, and the Raiders made some surprisingly poor selections during that time.

Leatherwood is actually the Raiders’ third consecutive first-round draft pick that didn’t even last two years on the list: The Raiders had two first-round picks in 2020, Henry Rogers and Damon Arnett, both of whom were released during the 2021 season.

The Raiders had three first-round picks in 2019, and those three performed better — but not by much: Clean FerrellAnd the Josh Jacobs And the Jonathan Abrams They all struggled to make a big impact, and the Raiders didn’t pick up the fifth-year option in any of their contracts.

And poor drafting under Gruden and Mayock bypassed the first round. Tryvon MullenThe Raiders’ second-round pick of 2019, was Circulated to Cardinals Yesterday for the conditional selection of the seventh round. Raiders had three third-round picks in 2020 – Lynn BowdenAnd the Brian Edwards And the Taner Musa – And none of them are still with the team either.

First-year Raiders coach Josh McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler didn’t inherit much good young talent when he took over the team that Gruden and Mayock left behind. The Raiders’ draft picks in recent years have been a lot of mistakes.