The Las Vegas Raiders are widely expected to have one or two roster spots at wide receiver up for grabs during training camp, giving undrafted free agent signing Corey Rucker from Arkansas State a chance to fill out the depth chart. It helps that he’s tied with Cian Slone as the Raiders’ highest-paid UDFA in the 2026 class, per Spotrac.
Rucker had an interesting college career, spending the 2020 and 2021 seasons with the Red Wolves before transferring to South Carolina for a year and then returning
to Arkansas State. He was productive during his five years in Jonesboro, collecting 255 catches for 4,069 yards and 27 touchdowns in 59 games. However, he had just one catch for a 52-yard touchdown with the Gamecocks before suffering a foot injury that limited him to just two games and led to his return to ASU.
As a prospect, the three-time All-Sun Belt selection didn’t get invited to the NFL Combine, but turned heads at his pro day by weighing in at nearly 210 pounds and running a 4.38-second 40-yard dash. He also showed off some impressive explosion numbers, recording a 37-inch vertical and a 10-foot-6 broad jump.
With that in mind, let’s flip on the tape and see what the Arkansas State product can bring to the table.
What stands out about Rucker’s route running is that he uses his speed as a threat to create separation on curls. He knows that cornerbacks are worried about getting beaten over the top when lining up against him and uses that to his advantage.
Here, he’s on the single-receiver side of a three-by-one formation while the defense runs Cover 3. That puts the corner on an island, where the corner is in man coverage while the rest of the unit plays zone. With no safety help, the corner doesn’t want to give up a big play to the speedy wide receiver and plays off coverage.
Post-snap, Rucker sells the go route by pushing vertical or releasing hard off the line of scrimmage and keeping his shoulders down before hitting the brakes on the curl route. That gets the cornerback to open his hips and begin defending the vertical route. So, when Rucker pulls up on the curl, the cornerback is in an awkward position and ends up slipping before being able to drive on the route.
While it’s only a yard or two on this rep specifically, the wideout also does a good job of working back to the quarterback to maximize his separation. All of that leads to a fourth-down conversion late in the game to keep Arkansas State’s hopes alive.
We’ll get another look at a curl route from Rucker on the clip above. Again, he sells the vertical route well by accelerating off the line of scrimmage and keeping his shoulders down. One subtle addition that he does here is veering toward the sideline at about the 35-yard line to really make it look like a fade route.
That gets the corner to open his hips again, but the corner does a much better job of staying on his feet and driving on the route this time. In response—and in part because it’s second down and not fourth, so moving the sticks isn’t as important for the offense—Rucker works back to the quarterback a little more to get enough separation to make the catch.
Additionally, he recognizes or feels the defender on his back. Rather than bringing the ball into his chest like a receiver normally would, Rucker keeps the ball away from his body. That prevents the defender from being able to play through the receiver’s back and punch the ball out for an incompletion. That’s excellent awareness and recognition of the situation to make an adjustment and fight against a natural tendency.
Part of what makes the Arkansas State product an intriguing UDFA signing is that he’s coming off back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons and could have been even more productive this last season if he and the Red Wolves’ quarterback connected on a few open deep passes. To be fair, part of the issue was that the wideout has suspect hands, and he did drop a few opportunities for explosive plays last season. But he also had a lot of uncatchable targets down the field.
In the clips above, Rucker shows a couple of nuances that, on top of his speed, can make him a bigger vertical threat with improved quarterback play in the pros.
On the first one, he shows good footwork and use of hands to beat press coverage by using a foot-fire release with a head/shoulder fake before swiping the cornerback’s hands away to win at the line of scrimmage. Also, he does a good job of stacking the corner once he clears the corner to get back on the path and give the quarterback plenty of room to complete the pass.
The corner bails on the second rep above, and Rucker adjusts by stemming inside on the route. The latter does a couple of things: it helps create space toward the sideline to give the quarterback more room to throw, and keeps the corner’s hips square before the receiver pivots toward the sideline on the fade route. Rucker also has a nice cross-chop to beat the physical coverage and still win deep, while also drawing the pass interference call.
This time, we’ll actually get to see a deep catch from Rucker, but the nuance is very different from the two routes above.
With the offense in second and forever, the defense comes out in a three-safety look and runs a variation of Cover 3. Instead of the two outside cornerbacks each being responsible for a deep third of the field, they’re playing underneath coverage, while the two safeties on the outside have the deep thirds on the perimeter. Essentially, this coverage functions similarly to Tampa 2; the defense just has a post safety in the middle of the field rather than a linebacker dropping into that area.
So, when Rucker clears the cornerback, he shows off his football IQ by recognizing the coverage and slowing down in the space between the corner and deep third safety to give the quarterback an opportunity for a hole shot. Granted, the ball doesn’t come right away because the quarterback is reading the safety and wants to make sure the safety takes the cheese on the seam route from the tight end.
Once the safety opens his hips and commits to the tight end, the QB lets it rip. Rucker does a nice job of tracking and adjusting to the ball in the air, while also turning his back to the defender to brace for and protect the ball from a big hit. He manages to secure the catch through the contact and turn what looked like a dead drive into a scoring opportunity in the red zone for the offense.
We’ll wrap up with another good example of the UDFA’s awareness, just in a slightly different context.
He’s running a slant against press coverage and does a good job of getting to square on his release to give himself a two-way go before using a head/shoulder fake and his hands to win inside. That allows Rucker to create separation off the line of scrimmage for an easy catch. However, with the defense playing Cover 1, the free safety is barrelling down on him.
That’s where the wideout’s awareness comes in, as he hits a spin move to make the safety miss and get up the field for some YAC. Granted, he only tacks on about five or six yards with the ball in his hands and goes down on the next tackle attempt, but the move up the field was the difference between the offense facing a fourth-and-short situation at midfield and picking up the third-down conversion.
There are two big factors I can see getting in the Arkansas State product’s way of making the Raiders’ roster this season: drops and a limited route tree.
As previously mentioned, Rucker isn’t sure-handed and had several drops last season. Obviously, that has to get cleaned up at the next level to make the team. But his route running could be the bigger issue. While Rucker wasn’t asked to run many routes other than curls and gos/fades in college, the handful of times the Red Wolves expanded his route tree, he struggled to make sharp cuts and would often drift out of the break.
As impressive as his explosion and linear athletic testing numbers were, his agility or lateral movement skills received a very poor Relative Athletic Score, recording 4.48-second short shuttle and 7.40-second 3-cone times. So, it will be important for the Arkansas State product to show improved change-of-direction skills during training camp. And of course, standing out on special teams will boost his chance of making the roster, too.
