The honeymoon phase is over for the new look Raiders. Defenses have some tape on them now and are stepping up to stop certain aspects of their offense. Which means they need to become more dynamic or their currently three-game losing streak will get longer.
One guy they will rely on for that is Tre Tucker. He came into the season as their top wide receiver, but hasn't yet been able to consistently take the top off of opposing defenses. But late in Sunday's game against Buffalo, Kirk Cousins launched a deep ball for him and Tucker proved his decision correct by going and getting it for a 44-yard touchdown.
Plays like that raise the trust levels considerably and has Cousins heaping some high praise on his speedy receiver.
“He's fast. I mean, he can
roll," Cousins said of Tucker. But when he says "roll" he wanted to be cleat that that means something specific. That's it's rare quality.
"Everybody's fast in this league," Kirk continued. "I used to joke that there's certain guys… like, in high school; when you're playing high school, you hear about these guys that are unbelievable, and you go see them, and you're like, 'Oh yeah, they jump out'. That starts to dwindle in college, and it dwindles even more in the NFL because everybody's good. But over my career, there have been a couple guys where you're like, ‘It feels like I'm back in high school’, where they're just different. It was Adrian Peterson, Percy Harvin, certain guys, where you're like, ‘Whoa’. But Tre has speed, where throwing to him -- I've thrown to a fair number of guys over my career -- and he can roll. There's only a handful of them at the very top with Brandon Banks, Deshaun Jackson, Aldrick Robinson, where it's, like, I can just hit the launch button and don't really have to worry about overthrowing them. And I put Tre in that category.”
It's an important distinction. Much like when people talk about speed vs football speed. Just because you're fast, doesn't mean you can translate that speed to a football field. And on top of that, can you take that football speed and then add the other key elements a wide receiver has to possess to the mix. Namely route running, hands, and instincts.
The degree of difficulty on that 44-yard catch was tremendous. Tucker outran two defensive backs and began separating when Cousins aired that ball out from more than 50 yards downfield from the landing spot. The speedster then adjusted, and laid out, catching the ball fully extended in the end zone for the score.
Yeah, you can understand how that might have a 15-year veteran QB thinking back to the handful of guys he's played with who could do that.
This article originally appeared on Raiders Wire: Raiders QB Kirk Cousins mentions Tre Tucker among rare NFL talent
