The Raiders ended the 2023 season with one of the best defenses in the NFL and based on the first two games of the 2024 season, last year doesn’t appear to be a fluke.
The Raiders invested heavily in their defense in the offseason, but a lot of their success in the last two seasons has involved players that don’t get a lot of national attention.
One of those players has been defensive tackle Adam Butler and another has been second-year cornerback Jakorian Bennett.
Through three games, Bennett leads the Raiders in pass breakups (3) and has forced incompletions on 38% of the passes thrown at him in coverage, according to Pro Football Focus. For comparison’s sake, Amik Robertson had the highest forced incompletion percentage on the team last year at 11 percent.
On Sunday against the Ravens, Bennett made a play that didn’t show up in the box score, but it changed the trajectory of the game.
With the Raiders down 10 points in the third quarter and the high-power Ravens offense closing in on midfield, Bennett broke up a short throw intended for Rashod Bateman that deflected into the arms of Robert Spillane for the interception.
Spillane got the interception, but it was Bennett who made the play.
A closer look at the All-22 film shows the pre-snap communication between Bennett and Jack Jones that led to Bennett being in position to make the play.
As for Spillane, he has made a career in Las Vegas of being in the right place at the right time.
Without question, Spillane’s interception was the turning point of the game as the Raiders went on a 20-7 run after the pick.
The cornerback position was once considered of the Raiders’ greatest positions of need, but the emergence of Bennett, Jones and Nate Hobbs has completely flipped the script.
He’s not a player many people know about outside of the Las Vegas, but at the rate his career is ascending, the rest of the league is going to know about Bennett much sooner than later.
