Each NFL team is allowed to host 30 players on pre-draft visits. That is aside from the local pro day the team is hosting today in Alameda or the private workouts they have at college pro days.
These pre-draft visits are by far the most intense meeting any of these players will have in their long process leading up to the draft. Often times you see players who have character questions and medical questions but who are an intriguing talent. Sometimes it’s just top players who the team doesn’t dare consider using the fourth overall pick on until they get a close look at them.
As Mayock laid out on Thursday, they put those prospects through the ringer.
“What we get out of all of them is we get ‘em in early, to the extent any of them hasn’t been tested for anything that we’re allowed to test . . .we get that done,” said Mayock.
“The biggest piece of it is a huge crunch of time with the coaching staff. Five, six, seven straight hours. And we want to find out which guys love it. It’s easy to love it sitting in front of Jon Gruden for ten minutes at 7am. Jon’s going to fire you up and then Jon’s going to hand you to the offensive coordinator and then the position coach and then you’re going to watch film and we’re going to come back and… two hours, three hours we’re going to watch film. And then we’re going to have a quick bite for lunch and then put you on the white board and find out what you’ve learned or didn’t learn. So, after six or seven hours of nothing but football tape, white board, do you still love it as much as you did when Jon was telling you you were going to be an All Pro at 7 am?
“That’s kind of the cool stuff is you get to see…it’s hard to fake it for seven hours. For 15 minutes at the combine that’s a different conversation, but for seven hours with these coaches grinding you and putting all new terminology and names on the board and asking you to regurgitate it back, can you retain it after lunchtime? Which terminology are you using the college or the Raiders? Which guys are in there at the end of 7 hours going ‘this is awesome, give me more’ and there are other guys that are like ‘when’s my flight leave?’ So, it’s kind of cool.”
Thus far the Raiders have had most of the top rated prospects for a visit. Here is the current reported list of visits:
Josh Allen, ED, Kentucky
Quinnen Williams, DI, Alabama
Montez Sweat, Mississippi State
Gary Johnson, LB, Texas
Derick Roberson, ED, Sam Houston State
Ed Oliver, DI, Houston
Connor McGovern, G/C, Penn State
Devin Bush, LB, Michigan
Nick Bosa, ED, Ohio State
They’ve also had private workouts with the top quarterbacks Kyler Murray, Dwayne Haskins, and Drew Lock (Senior Bowl).
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