Film room: Tyree Wilson doesn’t stand out again

Another quiet game for the top-10 pick

Last week, Silver and Black Pride dove into the film on Tyree Wilson’s underwhelming performance in the Las Vegas Raiders’ first preseason game. So, now that the Raiders completed their second preseason matchup against the Dallas Cowboys, let’s see if the Texas Tech product showed any growth from last week.

On the surface level, it seems as if Wilson blended in again. According to Pro Football Focus, he participated in 28 total snaps and only managed to rack up one pressure and recorded just one tackle to earn a sub-par 54.7 grade. But, the eye in the sky don’t lie, so let’s take a look at the tape.

Setting the edge as a run defender has been the most consistent part of Wilson’s play during the preseason. Here, the Cowboys run mid-zone to his side of the formation and he does a good job of keeping his hands inside and using those long arms to get extension on the right tackle’s block.

That along with a solid rep from Byron Young, forces the running back to cut inside where Adam Butler makes a nice play by physically dominating the left guard to make the tackle a a couple of yards past the line of scrimmage. Well done by those three defensive linemen.

This is Wilson’s only tackle from the game and, to be honest, it’s not exactly a high-quality play.

Granted, he is on the backside of an inside split-zone run and ends up defeating the block to make the tackle, so this isn’t a bad rep by any means. However, he is going up against a backup tight end and the tackle still leads to a five-yard gain. Also, if it weren’t for Butler getting penetration against the center, Wilson wouldn’t make this play.

Again, this isn’t to say the second-year pro had a bad rep here, it’s just not exactly encouraging that this is the only way a top-10 pick showed up on the stat sheet in the preseason.

This play is very frustrating because Trey Lance has a couple of poor reads that should have bailed the Raiders out on third and one.

First, this is an RPO where the Cowboys have a three-on-two advantage at the top of the screen, so Lance should throw to the inside slot receiver running the flat route for an easy first down and maybe even a touchdown. Second, with Wilson staying home against the read option, Lance should give the ball to the running back. Granted, Las Vegas does have a good play call for that with the blitz, but that’s even more reason to throw the flat route.

Aside from all of that, what bails Dallas and Lance out is Wilson takes a poor angle to the quarterback. He needs to work wide or move laterally to either make the tackle himself or force Lance to cut up the field and into the defense, especially with the nickelback blitzing off the edge on the other side of the formation.

That way either Isaiah Pola-Mao can make the tackle from the backside, Young can get off his block and stop the quarterback short of the sticks, or Divine Deablo comes downhill and makes the tackle. Granted, Deablo is also wrong here as he overpursues to the running back, but that doesn’t even matter with Wilson losing contain.

Moving onto Wilson’s pass rush, we’ll see a common theme from last week. His hands were often too low and too late on Saturday which let the offensive lineman get ot his chest and prevented him from being able to use those long arms.

While Wilson does get tripped up by the center and that’s part of the reason why he ends up on the ground, that doesn’t matter much as the right guard had control of this block throughout the entire rep.

This camera angle and rep give a better look at what was mentioned above about the defensive end’s hands. Notice how his hands are down by his waist or stomach when the left tackle throws the punch. That allows the tackle to make the first significant contact and it’s hard to win the rep as a pass-rusher when that happens because the tackle can gain control of the block by getting hands on the rusher’s chest.

Being a good pass rusher is similar to being a boxer, you have to keep your hands up and have quick hands to win. Reps like the one above were happening a lot to Wilson against the Cowboys.

We’ll end with a clip that was probably Wilson’s best rep of the day.

Dallas runs a toss play off a pin-and-pull concept where the offensive line is working laterally, meaning the left guard is trying to reach Wilson. It’s a gamble but Wilson works inside the reach block and wins to get penetration and be in a position to make the tackle for loss if the running back cuts up the field. That does force the back to stay wide where Elerson Smith is waiting to make the TFL after a dominant effort to set the edge.

Overall, it certainly feels like last year’s No. 7 overall pick’s development is behind schedule.