Raiders GM Tom Telesco Continued His History of Not Trading During NFL Draft

The Las Vegas Raiders did not make any draft-day moves in the 2024 NFL Draft, which is consistent from Raiders general manager Tom Telesco's days as GM of the Los Angeles Chargers.

"I mean, if you're in there, second round we were trying to go up pretty hard," Telesco said. "Even in the fourth round to come back in, we were trying to go up. But yeah, there's a little bit of a philosophy behind it that I wouldn't want to get into here. Maybe down the road I will, but it's certainly not a philosophy of, 'Hey, we're not trading up or down.' That's not it at all. But the one thing to do, we really stripped the board down pretty heavily in trying to increase the odds on the player that we take.

"So, we try and mitigate some risk by making sure we take some players off the board that just whatever – playability, scheme-wise, character, medical could impact their odds of making our team. So, we were in a lot of discussions to move up, move down. But most times it felt like when our pick was up, we felt good about the player that was there, and in the end you got to execute the pick and try to find the guy with the best chance to help you win. So, that's how it worked out this weekend."

Telesco discussed what the mindset for his club was going into the draft.

"I wouldn't say one big overriding goal, but I guess just trying to make sure we were drafting players that fit our identity," he said. "Obviously, there's needs we'd like to fill, I've told you before the needs kind of change. But depth is a need too, and you’ve got to have depth across your team, so that's a big part of it. But you're just trying to include everybody in the process. There's a lot of people, all the coaches, all the scouts, front office, even doctors and security, Bob Stiriti is a part of our draft process, He does all that background work for us. So, just a lot of people involved to get all the information together and make the best picks we can."

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