Nick Kasa was the first of two tight ends taken by the Raiders in the sixth round of the 2013 NFL Draft. Kasa, a former defensive end that is still learning the position of tight end, stands an imposing 6’6” 269 lbs.

That last sentence really sums up where Kasa is. Physically, he is very gifted – he has the height and build to compete well at the tight end position in the NFL but he’ll have a hard time excelling until he learns how to play the position well.

As you’d expect from a player that has recently changed positions, Kasa has a steep learning curve in front of him.

He’s a physical player – he gets up and into the man that he is blocking but struggles with technique in footwork, hand placement and understanding blocking angles.

In pass blocking, he had the necessary footwork to be able to keep his body between the passer and the defender. However, he tends to disengage from his man too soon which allows the defender to get back into a play out of which they should have been blocked.

He also struggles mightily with catching the ball with his hands, which limits his abilities in the passing game. Too often he guides the ball into his gut which will result in easy drops or, even worse, balls bouncing off and creating interceptions.

He has good straight line speed, but he lacks lateral explosion, which means he cannot explode to his side to get a pass that was off target to one side or the other. He looked almost comically slow trying to react to passes that were off target to his side.

On the positive, he does have very good straight-line speed for a man his size. His official Combine 40-time clocked in a full tenth of a second faster than fellow sixth round Raiders TE selection Mychal Rivera – 4.71 to 4.81 seconds, respectively.

Watching tape is always extremely interesting. For example, when the Raiders drafted Mychal Rivera, simply reading about him I thought his size – 6’3” 242 lbs – likely meant that he was an explosive receiver who probably didn’t have the size to be a great blocker but would serve as a good receiver option.

In essence, I thought that Rivera would be another David Ausberry, who is an explosive receiving threat but struggles in blocking. Ausberry, of course, was a receiver in college.

However, this perception could not be further from the truth. Instead, I found Rivera to be a better-than-expected blocker…but he is in no way a stretch-the-field receiver.

First, Rivera definitely lacks the size that teams would like at the position. His size makes him by far the smallest TE on the Raiders roster and he stands out as being small even on the college tape. Smaller than ideal players can still be impact players, of course, but Rivera’s ceiling is certainly much lower than other prospects including fellow rookie Nick Kasa.

The Raiders organization and fans successfully wooed DB Charles Woodson back to the Silver & Black yesterday.  Woodson, who was drafted by Oakland fourth-overall in the 1998 NFL Draft, spent eight years playing for Oakland before leaving for Green Bay in 2006. He had had tepid interest, at best, early in free agency but his market had heated up in recent days with a visit to Denver as well as the NY Giants and Panthers expressing some level of interest.

Woodson had come to the Raiders’ Alameda, CA headquarters yesterday and was greeted outside the facility by an estimated 100 fans in full Raiders gear. The rally, organized by some motivated Raiders fans, got the attention of many in the organization including FB Marcel Reece, QB Matt Flynn and head coach Dennis Allen, who stopped on their way out of the facility to sign autographs.

Woodson, 36, signed a one year deal with the Raiders. The terms are reportedly a $1 million base salary, plus a $700,000 signing bonus. The contract is worth up to $4.3 million if all incentives are met. As a practical matter, contracts’ incentives are never fully met so while he may make more than the $1.7M bottom of the contract, he is extremely unlikely to get the full $4.3M.

The Raiders, along with most every other team in the NFL, started their organized team activities (OTAs) for 2013 today.

The team can boast better attendance at their OTAs than most, if not all, other teams as every player that could attend, did, on their 90-strong roster.

That’s not to say that every player practiced – one notable exception was newly signed WR/KR Joshua Cribbs, who is still healing from an injury he sustained in 2012.  There were also two players – UDFA QB Kyle Patron and RB Deonte Williams – who weren’t allowed to come by NFL rules because their schools have yet to graduate.

Still, outside of those three, every player was out practicing today, a big accomplishment for coach Dennis Allen and his staff. One likely reason is because this year’s team, more so than any other year I can remember, has a lot of competition at a great many positions.

Here are some of the position battles to look forward to in the OTAs, mini-camps and training camps to come:

After the 2011 season, a season in which Tyler Wilson completed over 63% of his passes for 3600 yards and 24 TDs with only 6 INTs, Wilson seemed as good a candidate as any for the 2012 Heisman.

With an unexpected scandal and the ensuing firing of head coach Bobby Petrino combined with Wilson losing his top 3 targets to the NFL (Jarius Wright, Joe Adams and Greg Childs were all drafted in the 4^th round of the 2012 draft, Adams to the Panthers and Wright and Childs to the Vikings), Wilson’s chances at a Heisman or a National Championship looked substantially worse but Wilson and the others were still hopeful, as this Sports Illustrated piece in August of 2012 demonstrates.

Wilson had a solid season, completing over 62% of his passes and still throwing for over 3300 yards but the team struggled to score and went on to win only 4 games in 2012, one of the wins coming against lowly Jacksonville State University.

It was going to be interesting, therefore, to see what the tape showed about Wilson as a QB – both in 2011 and 2012.

Wilson does a great many things well – as should be expected for someone who was a possible Heisman contender and once considered a likely first round pick – but he has his struggles, too.

When the Raiders traded down with the Buccaneers in the fourth-round (they chose QB Tyler Wilson after trading down), they also picked up an extra sixth-round pick as compensation for trading down.

The pick, 181^st overall, was used to select running back Latavius Murray from Central Florida. Central Florida plays in a smaller conference in division I, Conference USA (C-USA for short). In fact, Murray had only one teammate also selected and joined only seven other players from C-USA to be drafted in 2013.  For comparison, SEC’s Alabama had nine players drafted, just by itself.

It’s safe to say that in Conference USA, Murray faced off against lesser opponents than many other schools in bigger and better conferences. This begs the question of how his success at Central Florida will translate to the NFL.

First, we’ll look Murray’s physical attributes. He is very large for a runningback (actually he’s large for just about every position except a lineman). Standing at 6’2”, 223 lbs, Murray is one of those players that “looks good coming off the bus.”

He’s also exceptionally fast. Pro days do not have official times like the Combine does but he was universally reported to have run his 40-yard dash at or just under 4.4 seconds. Some scouts reportedly had him in the 4.38 range.

While a player’s first mini-camp means almost nothing in the grand scheme of his entire career, first impressions are very important for everyone, even for NFL players.

The Raiders rookies had a chance to make a good first impression this weekend during the Raiders first 2013 mini-camp.

While we don’t know how the coaching staff feels about every prospect, some Raiders rookies made a good first impression with the assembled media – and some failed to make any impression at all.

By nature of the mini-camp not allowing contact, the winners and losers are all offensive because defenders aren’t really able to show much – especially the linebackers and defensive-linemen.

Winners:
WR Brice Butler – Butler was probably the biggest standout of the day.  The Raiders were working on 3rd down scenarios today, per head coach Dennis Allen, and that resulted in a variety of down the field passes with which Butler was able to excel.

Showing his great speed and an underrated ability to adjust to a ball in flight and put himself in a position to make some difficult passes down the field.  As a seventh round selection, Butler is no lock to make the team so making plays early will go a long way for him.