Spytek says he's ready to run Raiders' draft

HENDERSON, Nev. — After patiently waiting for 22-plus years, learning his craft all the while, John Spytek gets to sit at the head of the table.

The Las Vegas Raiders general manager gets to run his first NFL Draft next Thursday. He’ll have head coach Pete Carroll by his side in the team’s war room at the Intermountain Health Performance Center. And if need be, Tom Brady, the team’s minority owner, will be available to solicit an opinion or two.

“I mean, I'd be lying if I didn't say that this wasn't a dream come true. It certainly is,” Spytek said Friday as he and Carroll met with the media to discuss plans for next week. “But the gravity of getting the picks right and having a great process and making sure that we communicate is really more important to me than anything else.

“And I pride myself on being a team player. I don't think that this is about me at all. This is about the Raiders and the group of us people upstairs that want to put the best football team together for Raider Nation and for Mark Davis and all of the ownership group. And that's really my focal point.


“And added bonus to have to have coach here with me, who's excelled at this for a long time,” he continued. “I mean, I marveled at their drafts in Seattle in all the past years, all those decades when I was paying my dues, I was marveling at what coach was doing. So, anyway, there's a wealth of knowledge and I'm just excited for the opportunity for the group of us upstairs. There are so many people that have put so much work in, and I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge all of them, but that's really my focal point.”

Carroll said while this may be Spytek’s first time in charge, it’s not his first rodeo.
“Yeah, personally, there's no signs that this is John's first go around,” Carroll said. “It doesn't feel like that at all. He's gained so much from the people he's worked with. I'm sure they've given him latitude and they've utilized his powers and his strengths, because you can just tell he's very comfortable with the process.

“That doesn't mean that we don't — as we're growing together, there will be things that we tweak along the way. But I couldn't be more confident in where he's coming from, and I think it's because philosophically, we're so connected. We're very fortunate that they put us together to do this. And so, knowing where you come from and who you are is really, really valuable and particularly when you're faced with difficult answers and challenges and questions and things like that. We're rolling, not anytime have I felt like, 'Oh gosh, we're so young, we're so naive, we're so whatever.' We aren't like that. So, we're ready to go."

One thing Spytek apparently learned over the years is don’t divulge too much, if anything. He wasn’t about to reveal what the Raiders are going to do with the No. 6 overall pick.

“Well, when you're picking six, you only got to figure out five different combinations or players that could possibly go,” Spytek said. “I mean, our pro department up there right now with Ben (Chester) and Jordan (Brown) and Jordie (Hein), is doing a great job of tracking visits and private workouts and who was at pro days to try to figure out kind of where these teams might go to help you prepare. But at the same time, that's a lot of wasted energy to me, because at the end of the day we have no idea what these teams are going to do. We have a sense, but we're guessing.

“And I think our focus, coach and I's focus is more on the Raiders and are we comfortable with a stack of players that are there at six. Would we trade out? Would we trade up? Would we just stay and pick? What does that look like? Like, if there's one or two guys there that we love, we'll probably just stay and pick. If there's a guy that falls that we don't expect to fall, maybe we go get them. Or maybe we've got a group of players we feel comfortable with a little bit further back and we'd love to gather more trade assets and have more darts to throw at the dartboard here, so to speak.

“So, again, we're focused really on us at this point. The teams in front of us are going to do what they can do. We've got no control over that. And we better be ready to pick when we're up at six.”

The Raiders traded for a quarterback in Geno Smith. Would they take a quarterback if say, Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders is still available when it’s their turn to pick?

“Remain open-minded, and anybody that can help us at that position in particular is going to be up for consideration,” Spytek said. “You guys have all done your investigative journalism well enough to know that we brought some quarterbacks in and that wasn't by accident by any means. And we remain open to the most important position in sports to get right, and we're super excited to have Geno here, and we continue to expect him to be here for a while, but you can't have too many of those guys.”

The Raiders are a team with multiple needs. They can use a running back, an offensive lineman, a linebacker or two. Spytek is certainly aware of that and while the Raiders are linked to Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty. Spytek deftly sidestepped any reply about Jeanty directly.

"I'm going to be careful about talking about any specific player, but more broadly to the running back question, I mean we just saw Saquon Barkley just change the Eagles in one year,” he said. “Now they had a great team around him and it was adding an elite player. And I think when you sit where we sit, I mean the idea is to add elite players at any position. And I don't try to devalue any certain position. I mean, there's times in games where there's nobody you'd rather have than the best kicker in the league too, right? I mean, in that moment.

“So, there's certain ways to build a team, and I don't know where we got to a place where we don't feel like running backs are valued. I come from the University of Michigan to my core, and those guys were certainly really valued there. So, it's hard for me to get away from that."

Spytek also said if a trade makes sense for the Raiders, they won’t be afraid to make such a move.

“I think the thing that we want to plan for is some of the strategy,” he said. “Who would we just stay and pick, who would be willing to move out for, but on a premium. Who would be would be willing to move out for just let's get out and we feel like the value is further down the board. You can't predict all those different things, but I think if you've got kind of a set idea of how you want to do it, then you usually eliminate some mistakes, and you can kind of capitalize on some potential quality moves there.”

But it’s clear that Spytek and Carroll will be collaborating on whatever the Raiders do while leaning heavily on their scouts and other football people within the organization in the hopes of having a successful draft week.

“There's usually 32 teams that feel really good about their draft after it, but when we get the right kind of people in here, I think you can feel pretty confident you did a good job, and so we're shooting for that this year,” Spytek said.