Raiders Place K Sebastian Janikowski On Injured Reserve, Promote K Giorgio Tavecchio

Update:

Adam Schefter reports that the Raiders have promoted K Giorgio Tavecchio from their practice squad to the active roster.

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Adam Schefter reports that the Raiders have placed K Sebastian Janikowski on the injured reserve due to a herniated disc in his back.

He will be eligible to return off the injured reserve after eight weeks.

Janikowski has been dealing with a back injury and was listed as questionable for Week 1, so there is apparently some cause for alarm with his injury.

Raiders HC Jack Del Rio said earlier in the week that the team will continue to Janikowski’s injury as they approached Week 1’s game.

“I’m not good about forecasting things,” Del Rio said, via Michael Wagaman of the Associated Press. “We’ll see how he goes through the work week. There was concern early in the week that we’ll need to see how he does, how he responds. We had some kickers come in here to make sure that we’re prepared in the case that he’s not able to go that we’re covered. That’s really it.”

Oakland reportedly brought in a few kickers on Monday for workouts including Mike Nugent, Josh Lambo and Marshall Koehn, so they were clearly preparing for the possibility of being without Janikowski.

Janikowski, 39, is a former first-round pick of the Raiders back in 2000. He’s currently in the final year of his five-year, $18.9 million contract that included $8 million guaranteed and set to make a base salary of $4.05 million for the 2017 season when he restructured his contract last week.

He agreed to a $1 million pay cut and will earn a $3 million fully guaranteed salary.

In 2016, Janikowski appeared in all 16 games for the Raiders and converted 29 of 35 field goal attempts (82.9 percent) to go along with 37 of 39 field goal tries (94.9 percent) and 43 touchbacks.