AFC Notes: Chargers, Chiefs, Raiders

Chargers

New Chargers OC Kellen Moore knows he has a golden opportunity in front of him with QB Justin Herbert, and a chance to juice his potential head coaching candidacy in the future if the two of them do well together. Moore has his own offensive system but he notes with Herbert it’s more important to build off of what he’s already done well. 

“He’s just really detailed, really diligent with his work,” Moore said via the team website. “He really has just been awesome to kind of collaborate and make sure, as we go through this process, that we don’t lose anything as we go through a transition. I think that’s one big part of this thing, is that there’s been a lot of success. Justin has had a lot of success his first few years. We want to make sure we build off of that and not start from scratch.”

Chiefs

Chiefs GM Brett Veach explained that they think second-round WR Rashee Rice can do something of the things WR JuJu Smith-Schuster did for them last year. 

“I’m certainly excited to add Rashee to the mix here,” Veach said, via NFL.com. “He was a guy that the contested catch and the run after the catch was something that really stood out. We did lose JuJu, and I think it makes sense to find a guy that can do a lot of things that he can do on the inside game and he’s almost like a running back after the catch.”

Raiders

The Raiders had a plan to draft a quarterback but it wasn’t during the first round. Las Vegas did its homework on the group of passers projected to go on Day 3 and was prepared to make a move once the first one went off the board. So was the rest of the league, as five quarterbacks went in a 13-pick span, kicked off by the Saints trading up for QB Jake Haener. The Raiders made their move to jump in for the final pick of the fourth round and take Purdue QB Aidan O’Connell.

“It was a crazy run on quarterbacks,” Raiders GM Dave Ziegler said via the Athletic’s Vic Tafur. “Haener was one of the first ones to go, and I think … that’s what we kind of looked at it as, ‘OK, here comes the run.’ It gave us a little bit more of an aggressive mindset to go up and get the guy that we wanted to get, and then you saw those dominoes continue to fall. So, yeah, sometimes the draft works that way — it happened with the receivers in the first round, too. No receivers were taken, then all of a sudden four or five went.”

O’Connell is more of the old-school pocket passer and not nearly as athletic as the prototype the league seems to be shifting toward. That’s just fine with Ziegler and Raiders HC Josh McDaniels, though. 

“The one thing about quarterbacks that you don’t get to see if you’re just watching tape or if you’re just watching games is, I’d say, over 50 percent of their success rate is really about what they’re made up from the neck up. Intelligence, ability to process, those types of intangibles, leadership,” Ziegler said. “And we felt like he has a lot of those different intangible qualities.”