Around 70 Raiders players attend Monday’s voluntary OTAs

As the NFL began phase two of the offseason program (on-field work) on Monday, players from around the league have decided to forego the NFL Players Association’s requested boycott and attend the sessions anyway.

There were reports across the league saying that most of the players are attending the workouts on Monday. The majority of the Las Vegas Raiders’ roster have joined that movement and are working out at the team’s Henderson, Nevada, facility, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The Raiders have 90 players on their roster, so the vast majority of the team are attending the OTAs. In most years, attendance at voluntary OTAs around the NFL is near 100 percent. While we are not quite there yet, but having around 70 players working out is a win for Raiders coach Jon Gruden considering the Raiders’ were one of many rosters around the league to previously say as a group that most players would skip the OTAs per the urging of the NFLPA. The union had asked players to keep their OTA work virtually for the second straight year.

Recently, Denver Broncos’ tackle Ja’Wuan James was seriously injured while working out away from the team. Per NFL rules, teams are not required to pay a player’s salary for the season if they are injured away from the club. James was released by Denver last week.

Surely that has served as a cautionary tale for players throughout the NFL. So I’d expect the trend of seeing the majority of rosters attending OTAs will continue for the rest of the spring in Las Vegas and everywhere in the NFL.