The 2024 NFL draft was one of the best quarterback drafts in recent history and, notably, it was a draft the Raiders weren’t able to walk away with a quarterback.

The Raiders drafted Brock Bowers in the first round of the 2024 draft and no one in the building is regretting the pick. But one of the popular discussions in the years since has involved the team’s mindset in the 2024 draft – specifically, how the organization, led by GM Tom Telesco, addressed the quarterbacks in the draft.

This week, Telesco was a podcast guest of ESPN host Peter Schrager and shared his mindset in addressing the Raiders quarterback situation in his singe season as General Manager of the team.

“We loved Nix. We liked Penix. We liked some of those guys, but if he had to trade up for one of those guys, we just didn’t have a lot of talent yet if we have to give up picks to do that,” Telesco said on the The Schrager Hour.

Asked if he was surprised by quarterbacks drafted ahead of the Raiders in 2024, Telesco acknowledged that the Penix pick caught him by surprise a little.

Telesco seemed to think there was a good chance Penix would be on the board for the Raiders at pick 13.

“The Penix one, I knew the Falcons like him. I thought they liked him more in the second round than the first round,” Telesco said. “But the other guys, there was no surprise they were going where they were. If you need a quarterback and there’s a potential franchise quarterback, you should probably take him.”

For what it’s worth, this isn’t the first time Telesco has talked about the 2024 draft and how the Raiders ended up with Bowers.

“We did a lot of work and talked a lot about [drafting Penix], but in the end, probably not,” Telesco said on the Check the Mic podcast in June.

“We got into J.J. McCarthy, Bo Nix and Michael Penix, as far as trading up for those guys, that I was not as much into,” Telesco continued. To give up that many assets, because we were going to have to give up a lot of draft picks. We needed as many as possible to try to build up the team. So that would have been a hard move to make to trade up for one of those quarterbacks… other than Jayden Daniels that was going to be a non-starter.”

“Bo Nix, his background of work, his durability, his movement skills. That one was interesting, and he’s gone to the perfect team. That would have been a good possibility.”

Going into the 2024 draft there were rumors the Raiders liked Penix, and even after the draft former Raiders color commentator Lincoln Kennedy said he thought Penix was the quarterback they had their eye on.

Telesco has been clear in recent months that he preferred Nix, but there were rumors around the time of the draft that certain individual(s) above Telesco (i.e. ownership and influential people in the organization) were pushing for Penix until the Falcons took him off the board.

x: @raidersbeat

Combine Preview + Draft Analysis with Former GM Tom Telesco | Schrager Hour

Heading into the 2026 NFL Draft Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, Peter lists his top 5 Combine storylines he’s following and provides his thoughts on the 21 new offensive coordinator hirings across the NFL. He, then, brings in longtime NFL GM and executive Tom Telesco to go through the following few months and what that entails for an NFL general manager.