Monday afternoon, a day after having officially announced all their cuts, the Raiders made another move. The team announced that WR Dont'e Thornton will head to injured reserve.
Thornton has been injured through much of camp and for several weeks now head coach Klint Kubiak has said he expects Thornton to return soon. First he expected he would be back during the preseason, and then on Friday, he said this about the second-year receiver.
“He's still working to come back from an injury, working really hard at it too. And that's part of football, injuries are part of football, and he's straining to get better to get back on the field.”
Thornton's exact injury is not known. They certainly haven't known the severity of it up to this point. But it seems
like this was the plan yesterday when he made the roster.
With the roster cuts, the one unexpected one was LB Segun Olubi. The special teams maven was the one player on my 53-man roster projection who was cut. And now we see why. Because the plan was to then turn around and sign him back. Only a risk if Olubi wanted to go elsewhere because he wasn't subject to waivers as a vested veteran.
Olubi was signed this offseason after four seasons with the Colts. Last season, he played in all 17 games and recorded 11 special teams tackles, one forced fumble and one blocked punt. That blocked punt came against the Raiders.
The 6-0, 225-pound linebacker appeared in 51 games in Indianapolis registering 30 tackles on special teams, the most on the Colts team over that span.
This article originally appeared on Raiders Wire: Raiders send WR Dont'e Thornton to IR and bring veteran LB back
