Raiders TE Dudley Was Good, Could Have Been Great

Later today, Dave Ziegler and the Las Vegas Raiders have to cut the roster to 53 players, and they are looking for good players who could be significant, like Rickey Dudley.

The Las Vegas Raiders hope that rookie Michael Mayer will someday be rated alongside the great tight ends in franchise history, including Hall of Famer Dave Casper, Raymond Chester, Todd Christensen, Zach Miller, and Darren Waller.

Among the overlooked standouts at the position was Rickey Dudley, who the Silver and Black selected with the ninth overall pick of the 1996 NFL Draft out of Ohio State, where he was an All-Big Ten selection and the offensive MVP in the Citrus Bowl after catching five passes for 106 yards and a touchdown in a victory over Tennessee.

“When a player of Rickey’s talent is available, you go after him,” Ohio State Coach Randy Ayers said of the high school basketball star. “There were other schools in the Big Ten who were recruiting him, and I didn’t want to play against him for the next four years."

Wrote Bleacher Report after the 6-foot-7, 255-pound Dudley’s first few seasons with the Raiders: “Dudley is a tight end who can run with the wind and jump out of a stadium. He has all the tools a tight end could need, except that he had a tendency to drop the football.”

Dudley was a model of durability and productivity in his five seasons with the Raiders at the outset of his NFL career. He never missed a regular-season game and started in only two of his 80 appearances.

Dudley averaged 37.2 catches, 525.4 yards and 5.8 touchdowns—solid numbers for the tight end position, but people dwelled upon his drops.

Only once in his first five seasons did Dudley make fewer than 30 receptions in a season, and he scored at least four touchdowns every year.

Dudley's best season came in 1997, when he caught 48 passes for and 787 yards, both career highs, and scored seven touchdowns. In 1999, he scored a career-best nine touchdowns, and his average of 14.1 yards per catch was the best in the league for a tight end during those five seasons.

After departing the Raiders following the 2000 season for one season with the Cleveland Browns and three with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Dudley sustained a series of debilitating injuries. Only once in those four seasons, when he played in 14 games for the Buccaneers in 2002, Dudley made more than seven game appearances, as he battled foot, ankle, and thumb injuries.

During this injury-marred four-year stretch, Dudley averaged 8.8 receptions and only once had more than ten catches.

Dudley caught 186 passes for 2,267 yards and 29 touchdowns in his five seasons with the Raiders, and for his nine-year NFL career, he had 221 receptions for 3.024 yards and 33 touchdowns.

Unfortunately, this guy could have ranked with Casper, Chester, Christenson, and the rest had things all gone right.

The Silver and Black open the regular season at the Denver Broncos on Sunday, September 10, at 4:25 p.m. EDT/1:25 p.m. PDT.

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