The 2024 NFL Draft is the LA Chargers' first draft without Tom Telesco in over a decade. There is a new regime in Los Angeles that needs to fix the broken-down car that Telesco left behind. Telesco still managed to get a GM job, though, as the Las Vegas Raiders thought it was a good idea to bring him in.
Telesco's first draft with the Raiders started well as two players who ranked highly on draft boards fell right into the team's lap (sound familiar, Chargers fans?). Vegas ended up with Brock Bowers in the first round and Jackson Powers-Johnson in the second round. Two good picks, there is no refuting that.
Then the draft board opened up and Telesco was forced to make a selection that wasn't so easy. As Chargers fans know all too well, that is not his strong suit. With the 77th pick in the draft, the Raiders took Maryland tackle DJ Glaze.
Glaze is not someone who was projected to go this early in the draft. In fact, heading into the draft, he ranked 152nd on the NFL Mock Draft Database's consensus big board. Telesco took Glaze 75 picks higher than he ranked on the big board.
Tom Telesco special https://t.co/ZUU9ux5TMo
— Arjun Menon (@arjunmenon100) April 27, 2024
Chargers fans can't help but laugh at Tom Telesco's massive Raiders draft pick reach
Look, once the draft gets outside the top 50 picks or so the big boards really start opening up. Just because the media ranked a certain prospect one way does not mean that prospect is viewed the same way by teams in the NFL. That is just the nature of the draft.
That being said, this is not a one-off occurrence for Telesco. This is something he did time and time again while he was the GM of the Chargers and it never seemed to work out. Telesco never really made a great third or fourth-round pick after taking Keenan Allen in his first draft in 2013. It was mostly whiffs.
The Telesco process is to find a prospect in the middle rounds who is raw but has one trait that he likes. Then the hope is that the team will develop that trait and that in 3-4 years, that player can be a solid addition.
Rarely did this strategy work and as a result the Chargers always had players on the back half of the roster who weren't NFL-ready who were forced into playing too soon because they were earlier draft picks. That stunted development and a lot of these picks missed.
Does this guarantee that Glaze is going to be a failure for the Raiders? Not at all. But Chargers fans know this song and dance and there is a far higher chance that Glaze won't work out and that Raiders fans will be left wondering why he was picked so early in the first place.