Bowers Back at Practice. The Harder Call Comes Friday.

Brock Bowers returned to practice this week, which is the first genuinely good news the Raiders' offense has had since he went down for the meniscus surgery. After spending Week 1 on the sideline while Michael Mayer handled the tight end work, Bowers is at least moving again — and that matters for a team that leaned on him heavily last season, when he caught 64 passes for 680 yards and seven touchdowns in just 12 games.

The question now isn't whether he's back. It's whether he's back enough to play against the Chargers. That's a different calculation, and it's the one Klint Kubiak's staff has to make before the week is out. A meniscus is not an ankle. You can manage an ankle through discomfort. A knee that hasn't fully cleared is a different kind of risk, and Bowers is too central to what this offense is trying to build to absorb a setback in Week 2.

Mayer, who just signed his extension, showed he can hold the position. That's the whole point of having insurance. My read is the Raiders don't rush Bowers back into a full workload here — maybe he suits up, maybe he plays limited snaps, but the smarter move is getting him to full health before asking him to carry the offense again. The 2025 version of this team made decisions that cost them close games. This one has a chance to be more careful with what it has.