Just when you thought the Raiders were in a great position coming out of the bye week, a huge wrench gets thrown into the gears. Starting right tackle Trent Brown has been placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list after just one game back with the team.
Prior to the bye week, head coach Jon Gruden had mentioned several players he was looking forward to returning healthy. Among them was Brown, who he was looking forward to seeing in improved health after the big right tackle missed the first four games with a calf injury.
Not only does it look like the team will be without Brown for Sunday’s game, but Wednesday the team sent all five of their starting linemen home due to contact with Brown.
“We don’t have Trent today, we don’t have any of our linemen, so I’m not happy about it. I’m not happy,” Gruden said over video conference call Wednesday. “I’m concerned. I’m more concerned about Trent’s health than anything. This is COVID and I’m concerned about anybody that has it or is near it.”
We don’t know yet how many days the starting line will be out, if any of them will test positive for COVID-19, and if they too could miss Sunday’s game against the Buccaneers.
What we know is that missing any practices is not good. This Raiders team is prepping for a Bucs defense putting up historic numbers thus far this season and need their offense working at its best. This will not help.
“We used other linemen obviously and we adjusted practice,” Gruden added. “We still got a lot of work done, but you got to have linemen to perform, but we’ll have five on Sunday, we’ll be ready to go.”
Gruden hopes to have his linemen back soon or at very least by Sunday’s game.
