Don’t look now, but we are exactly 2 weeks from the day the Raiders report to training camp. It’s right around the corner, folks. The season itself is a bit farther off — 58 days to be exact — but once they hit that camp field, the rest of the days will just melt away. Let’s take a look at the Raiders’ number 58, shall we.
LB Tyrell Adams
This time last year Adams was preparing for Chiefs camp, hoping to at very least land on the team’s practice squad for a second time, but it wasn’t to be. He spent the first month of the 2016 unemployed before being signed to the Raiders’ practice squad.
Less than two months later, former undrafted first year player out of West Georgia was called up to the active roster and saw action in the final 6 games and one playoff game — all as a special teams player.
Despite not taking a single snap on defense with the Raiders in six games, he has been running first team this offseason at inside linebacker. That either means the Raiders are really impressed or they have a lack of options.
Sure, it could be a combination of the two, but mostly it’s a lack of options. Adams and second-year linebacker Cory James have been lining up with the first team because as of the start of OTA’s they were the team’s longest tenured healthy linebackers.
Adams probably doesn’t mind, because he needs all the reps he can get to make a strong impression on his coaches in the hopes of taking the next step -- seeing time as a linebacker in a regular season game.
Who wore it best: LB Monte Johnson (1973-80)
A second round pick by the Raiders in the 1973 draft, Johnson would start nearly every single game from 1975-79. In the process, he helped the team win their first Super Bowl. Johnson was a major factor in the famed Ghost to the Post game in which he had 22 tackles. He played eight seasons in the NFL, all with the Raiders. Though he was on the 1980 Raiders team that would ultimately win the Super Bowl that year, he suffered career-ending knee injury during the regular season.
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