How will the Raiders replace Alec Ingold?

The Las Vegas Raiders have lost two in a row but can salvage their season with a win over the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday afternoon. They will be without one of their key pieces after an ACL injury knocked Alec Ingold out for the year.

Ingold's presence as a fullback in this offense allowed the Raiders to be versatile in their personnel. He could line up outside and run routes or catch check-downs out of the backfield to create after the catch.

Where Ingold excelled was his ability to block. Ingold is 7^th in PFF grades in run blocking compared to other fullbacks around the league. From my charting, Ingold had four blown blocks on 77 rushing snaps. He was steady and had a bounce back from a down year for him in 2020.

The question becomes, how will the Raiders replace the former Wisconsin fullback? In the game versus the Kansas City Chiefs, the response was Foster Moreau as the Raiders lined up in 12 personnel and had him play full back. However, their success rate when running out of 12 personnel was 33% on the day.

The answer to this is running out of 11 personnel, which the Raiders have switched to in recent weeks. The Raiders run out of 11 42 percent of the time since Greg Olson came over with a success rate of 81 percent. The rushing attack averages 6.0 YPC during this span, with three touchdowns and two in the red zone. By comparison, when Ingold was on the field during the same timeframe, the Raiders success rate was 44 percent. A good amount of those runs were during garbage time.

The Raiders got away from this running style on Sunday night, leading to stalling drives in the first half. The Raiders ran 13, 12, or 22 personnel six times on the nine first-half runs and didn't have a successful play on any of those rushing attempts. Their longest run of the day was a 12-yard run by Kenyan Drake out of 11 personnel.

While the Raiders will be missing Ingold as a run blocker in the heavier personnel groupings the Raiders run game might focus on running out of 11 personnel more often.