There are some questions around the Raiders’ offensive line going into the 2025 season, but for now it looks like there will be two second-year players starting in the offensive trenches for Pete Carroll.
As a rookie, Jackson Powers-Johnson told former head coach Antonio Pierce he was going to be the starting center after Andre James went down last year and never looked back. The former Rimington Trophy winner has already become a fixture in the middle of the Raiders’ O-line.
But a little more surprising at the moment is that it looks like last year’s third-round pick, D.J. Glaze, is the early favorite to be the starting right tackle in Las Vegas.
According to Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter, Glaze is in the pole position at right tackle going into OTAs and he’s doing it with one of the more unique personalities on the team.
“Delmar has a smile that lights up a room like Earvin [Johnson]. I’m going to say this, and I’ve not hidden the fact of how much I like him as a person and a player, but one of the things I really love about [Glaze] is he has a childhood love of the game of football,” Carpenter said on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast.
“He plays this game like he’s still 12 years old in the backyard of Mama’s house playing on Thanksgiving Day with his cousins. He just loves the game. He is very coachable… His parents raised a young man that has no ego in him. No ego.”
Last year, Carpenter said Glaze responded extremely well to coaching at the Senior Bowl and was one of the most improved players among the group that week.
“I was told from day three on through the actual Senior Bowl, he was the best tackle. He dominated. The Raiders love his fight [and] his fury, but they also liked his coachability,” Carpenter said about Glaze a year ago.
And for what it’s worth, Carpenter wasn’t the only one who noticed Glaze at the Senior Bowl…
