Paul Gutierrez of the Raiders team website<\/a>, franchise majority owner Mark Davis signaled his eagerness for the top pick, then conceded that JaMarcus Russell, the team\u2019s last pick in the slot, didn\u2019t work out.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
From the Raiders:<\/p>\n
“Well, I’m really impressed with the way [Raiders general manager John Spytek] and [Raiders head coach Klint Kubiak] are working together, along with John’s staff and the coaching staff,” Davis said. “Having the first pick in the draft is exciting because we kind of control the draft \u2014 we get to make the decision on who we’re gonna pick.<\/p>\n
“But we’ve had that position before, and it didn’t work out. So there’s no magic bullet there, but it’s a great opportunity to get a great player, whoever they decide to pick.”<\/p>\n
\u201cDidn\u2019t work out\u201d is putting it mildly.<\/p>\n
Russell arrived in Oakland with a big arm, big frame and big expectations after earning All-SEC first-team honors at LSU, but struggled from the beginning. His NFL career lasted only three mediocre seasons and he looms as one of the biggest draft busts in NFL history, especially when considering two Hall of Famers (Calvin Johnson and Joe Thomas) were selected with the two picks immediately after him.<\/p>\n
So the Raiders have good reason to hope this time it goes better. They are widely expected to use the pick to draft Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who won the Heisman Trophy and a national championship last season, both firsts for the Hoosiers.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
The selection will be part of a busy offseason for the Raiders. In addition to the infamous non-trade of star pass-rusher Maxx Crosby, the team has made a bevy of signings<\/a>, including center Tyler Linderbaum, defensive end Kwity Paye, linebackers Quay Walker and Nakobe Dean and wide receiver Jalen Nailor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Las Vegas Raiders have the first overall pick of the 2026 NFL Draft. You do not need…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4955,19679,7,3973,28075,4949,4996,393,12080,6563,477,6,15,49591,468,36920,7427],"class_list":{"0":"post-848273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl-draft","8":"tag-2026-nfl-draft","9":"tag-calvin-johnson","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-jalen-nailor","12":"tag-jamarcus-russell","13":"tag-john-spytek","14":"tag-kwity-paye","15":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","16":"tag-mark-davis","17":"tag-maxx-crosby","18":"tag-nakobe-dean","19":"tag-nfl","20":"tag-nfl-draft","21":"tag-paul-gutierrez","22":"tag-quay-walker","23":"tag-top-pick","24":"tag-tyler-linderbaum"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116332340526720581","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}