Oakland Raiders: Bringing back Martavis Bryant is a panic move

The Oakland Raiders can’t be happy with the way they performed after opening week. Bringing back Martavis Bryant is a panic move.

After a devastating 33-13 loss in the week one Monday Night Football finale against the Los Angeles Rams, the Oakland Raiders have hit the panic button.

The team has officially signed wide receiver Martavis Bryant back on a one-year contract, and it’s highly likely he won’t even see close to one year’s worth of play. Why did the Raiders let him go in the first place?

On principle, the Raiders released Bryant at the time of final cuts because he was facing a suspension from the league. The league hasn’t officially sorted anything out with Bryant yet and the Raiders decided not to stick with him regardless.

Now that they’ve lost a game by three touchdowns, they have decided to bring him back.

This is a panic move if I’ve ever seen one, but that’s not to say it can’t work out for the Raiders.

Derek Carr struggled on Monday Night, throwing three interceptions, one that was returned for a touchdown by Marcus Peters. That’s an all-too-familiar sight for AFC West quarterbacks, who had hoped they were rid of Peters for good. They’ll have to simply deal with him once this year and then not again for a while.

Carr’s struggles went beyond simply throwing to the wrong team. He targeted his top two wide receivers — Amari Cooper and Jordy Nelson — a total of seven times. As a matter of fact, Carr threw 40 passes in this game and only targeted wide receivers on nine passes.

The rest went to tight ends and running backs with Jared Cook and Jalen Richard combining for 23 of the targets.

That’s an insane number for a team that has players it can spread the ball around to at receiver.

Bryant will, at the very least, bring an intimidating presence that the Denver Broncos will have to respect in week two. He’s an extremely talented playmaker and outside receiver who dominates with speed and size.

The Broncos will have to account for him every play he’s on the field, and the Raiders’ hope will obviously be that he takes away enough focus from other players that they are able to exploit some matchups.

The big issue in this week’s game is, the Broncos have a much better second level of defense than the Los Angeles Rams and the Raiders might not have as easy of a time getting the ball to Jared Cook and Jalen Richard as they did in week one.