Powers-Johnson Is Out Sunday. Kansas City Won't Care.

Jackson Powers-Johnson is listed out for Week 4, which means the Raiders are walking into Arrowhead — or hosting Kansas City, depending on the schedule — with a reshuffled interior. Will Putnam holds the center spot on the depth chart. That's the situation.

It matters more against this opponent than it would against most. Kansas City's defensive front has been one of the better units at collapsing interior gaps and forcing quarterbacks into early decisions. A center change mid-season, against that kind of pressure, is the kind of thing that shows up in third-and-short and two-minute situations — exactly the moments Las Vegas couldn't handle last year. The Raiders went 2–5 in one-score games in 2025. That number didn't come from bad luck. It came from execution failing when the margin for error disappeared.

The good news, such as it is: Ashton Jeanty is active, and Brock Bowers is back in the mix. If the line can hold long enough to let those two do their jobs, Las Vegas has enough around the edges to stay in this game. The question is whether a backup center can hold up when Kansas City decides to test him, and that question won't get answered in warmups.

Worth watching, not panicking over. But worth watching.