The Las Vegas Raiders have had no shortage of NFL Draft blunders over the years, no matter who is at the helm. And, their latest might have come in the 2023 NFL Draft, one of the team’s beat reporters suggested recently.

With one of their two picks in the third round of the 2023 NFL Draft, the Raiders took Alabama defensive tackle Byron Young, a pick made by their former general manager Dave Ziegler, who was fired in 2023.

However, that may not have been the Byron Young the Raiders intended to take. Raiders beat reporter and ESPN host Q Myers recently stated that he thinks Las Vegas actually intended to take Byron Young out of Tennessee.

Of course, Young went seven picks later and is a budding star with the Los Angeles Rams after tallying 15.5 sacks over his first two seasons in the NFL.

“This is just me, I don’t know this for a fact, but I definitely believe they selected the wrong Byron Young. I think unintentionally. I think it was just attention to detail,” Myers said on ESPN Radio.

“I don’t know this, and it could just end up being a funny, but he was selected before Byron Young went to the Rams, and I remember a lot of people said ‘Wait, are you sure it’s the Alabama one that they’re taking?’”

If this is indeed true, picking the wrong guy is bad in and of itself, but it’s even worse when you consider that the Raiders’ Byron Young only played in six games in 2023 before being cut prior to the 2024 campaign.

Adding fuel to the fire that the Raiders might have screwed up, the Rams edge rusher recently admitted he received a text from Las Vegas saying that the team was going to draft him, only to later find out that the Raiders were texting the wrong agent.

It’s also important to note that the player the Raiders drafted was widely considered a prospect who would go much later in the draft, if at all.

Now, on the flip side of all that, it should be noted that when Ziegler made the call to Young, he mentioned how he was excited for the lineman “to eat some space, defeat some blocks, beat up the middle of the pocket a bit.”

It sure sounds like Ziegler knew he was talking to an interior defensive lineman, so take that for what it’s worth.

If the Raiders did indeed screw their pick up, it would be par for the course for a franchise that seemingly always finds a way to mess things up in the draft. What’s hilarious is that Las Vegas had a fantastic draft in 2024, yet the man responsible for that, Tom Telesco, was fired.

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