Brock Bowers’ unlikely road to becoming the Raiders’ first-round pick (2024)

Like a child still marveling at their surprise gift long after they opened it, the Las Vegas Raiders lined up rookie tight end Brock Bowers inside and out wide at OTAs last week. They even handed him the ball out of the backfield a couple of times.

A month has passed, and the Raiders still can’t believe Bowers was on the board at pick 13. Yeah, it was like hitting a Las Vegas jackpot.

“I’m extremely excited,” offensive coordinator Luke Getsy said last week. “Brock’s a unique guy. … This league is about finding as many dynamic guys as you can get on your team. I think he’s just one of those elements that gives us an opportunity to do a bunch of different things.”

Bowers has a great catch radius and explodes down the field after his catches. He is also a man of few words.

“I just try and turn good plays into great plays,” he said.

Heating up 🔥 pic.twitter.com/w8JPcTYmgi

— Las Vegas Raiders (@Raiders) May 21, 2024

Watching him at the University of Georgia and, now, with the Raiders, no one would have guessed that one of the NFL’s more unique, dynamic young playmakers got his start at a nondescript high school program in Napa, Calif. More accurately, Bowers’ origin story began in eighth grade at KT Prep, a national seven-on-seven academy in Danville, Calif.

“We are at Diablo Valley College practicing — and we had a pretty good seven-on-seven team that we were coaching — and this eighth-grader came out onto the field,” former NFL running back Maurice Jones-Drew said. “He started killing these juniors and seniors. We had some kids that were going to big-time college programs. I was like, ‘Who is this dude?'”

Jones-Drew didn’t know what KT Prep founder Nathan Kenion had in store for him that day. Kenion had been surprised himself when he first met Bowers.

“He was a big, 6-foot-1 kid with big hands and big feet,” Kenion said. “I thought he was a swimmer. I thought he was going to be a little clumsy his first time on the field. But he wasn’t. It was the complete opposite. He already had good speed and he caught the ball well, and I remember looking at the other people on the sideline and being really excited.”

Now 6-foot-3 and 240 pounds, Bowers went on to star at Georgia, where he became the first back-to-back winner of the John Mackey Award, given to the nation’s top tight end. He joined Herschel Walker and David Pollack as the only Bulldogs to be named All-America three straight years and finished his career with 26 receiving touchdowns and five rushing TDs.

That first day Jones-Drew saw him, he saw that Bowers was a competitive, natural receiver who ran good routes. Then he didn’t see Bowers again for 18 months (due to some broadcasting opportunities) — until a seven-on-seven tournament in Los Angeles.

“I couldn’t believe it. He had changed drastically,” Jones-Drew said. “He had gotten bigger and stronger and still had that burst. He was the best player on the whole circuit. By far. And he was only a sophom*ore. He was so strong, and we just threw the ball to him all day. He was unguardable. The last game, it was on the line and we threw him a post into double coverage and he comes down with it to get us within one point.

“We then go for the win, and we throw him a slant and the defense is all over him. He catches the ball and the safety lowers his shoulder and hits him and the ball rolls out and we lose.”

Bowers came to the sideline in tears.

“He was like, ‘My bad, I can’t believe I lost us the game,'” Jones-Drew said. “I was like, ‘What are you talking about? We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.’ He cares so much.”

KT Prep has had more than a handful of players make the NFL, but Bowers is — pardon the cliché — a unicorn. Take the Nike SPARQ Combine his sophom*ore year in high school, where Bowers ran a 40 for the first time.

“He didn’t know how to do a three-point stance,” Jones-Drew said. “So, on his 40-yard dash, he did a defensive end stance instead of a track stance. And he ran a 4.5.”

Said Kenion: “He also had a 40-inch jump and was unguardable, and that’s when the recruiting really took off.”

Bowers had one offer (Nevada) before he walked into that combine. Afterward, the recruiting faucet turned on, and once the film of Bowers’ first game of his junior season was out, it was a flood.

“The phone started going crazy,” said his father, Warren Bowers. “There aren’t a whole lot of guys who come out of Napa High School, so it was a big thrill for the school to have all of the top coaches wandering around.”

Bowers took it all in stride.

“He is a really quiet kid who never talks back and aims to please,” Kenion said. “He is a real throwback, a coach’s dream. And he always went full speed and never asked for a play off. He’ll rip something off the bone before he slows down or shows he’s in any pain.”

Bowers comes from a family of athletes, so doing everything it takes to win came naturally. His mom, DeAnna, was an All-American softball player and is in Utah State’s Hall of Fame, while Warren was an All-Big West center on Utah State’s football team. Brock’s lone sibling, older sister Brianna, played softball at Sacramento State.

“It was definitely a competitive household,” Brock said. “We couldn’t play too many games as a family.”

When Brock was 10, the family found a game at Legoland in which teams had to pump water from a fire truck and hit targets. The losing team walked, while the winners stayed on. Other families were less than thrilled at the Bowers clan’s high-fiving zeal as they won eight or nine straight before walking off and retiring as sweat-soaked champions.

“We don’t take anything lightly,” Warren said, adding that the title of “best athlete in the family” is still hotly contested. Warren, though, takes credit for Brock’s explosiveness after the catch.

“My wife says she will beat me in a 40-yard dash, but that I would be winning the first 10 yards, so I must have the burst,” he said, laughing.

His parents and their friends first noticed their son was different in sixth grade on his traveling basketball team.

“He was getting by bigger and bigger kids with his first step, and once we got to KT Prep, we really started taking the show on the road,” Warren said.

Brock, meanwhile, was dedicated to ensuring the show only got better.

“We practiced 45 minutes from him, and he never missed a practice,” Jones-Drew said. “He was professional back in the eighth and ninth grade. And he is just a crazy athlete at that size and speed.”

Oregon and Washington were high on his list at one point. Stanford — a local school known for academics and for producing top tight ends — came into the process too late. (“He had already picked his top six schools; we were heading up to go fishing one day when they called,” Warren said, “and he told them that he appreciated the phone call but no thanks.”) Notre Dame wanted him as a pass rusher. LSU just wasn’t the right fit despite then-coach Ed Orgeron’s persistence. (“Brock would say, ‘The Cookie Monster left a message again,'” Warren said, referring to Orgeron’s raspy voice.)

Bowers and his parents liked the coaching continuity at Georgia — something Brock didn’t have in high school — as well as the small-town family vibe there, and he didn’t get the same feeling on their trip to LSU.

“His parents knew he was talented, but there was a point where they may have wondered if he was Georgia talented,” Kenion said. “And I told them he could go anywhere and play. I compared him to Travis Kelce and George Kittle, and he would beat both those guys in a foot race.”

Bowers wanted to play against the best players in the country, and he also wanted to hunt and fish in his spare time.

“At Georgia, he would be 20 minutes away from the middle of nowhere fishing or 30 minutes away from turkey and deer hunting,” said Warren, who passed on his father’s love of the outdoors to his son.

Bowers got a jump on Georgia living when Napa High canceled his senior season due to the COVID-19 pandemic and he enrolled in college a semester early, in January 2021.

“He had been training that fall when he took his last two classes, and he showed up in Georgia in great, great shape,” Warren said. “He was running every single day, and I think part of that was out of frustration at losing his senior year.”

Todd Monken was the offensive coordinator then at Georgia, the role he now holds with the Baltimore Ravens.

“We didn’t know exactly what we were getting in Brock,” Monken told reporters in 2022. “We knew he was rare in how he worked. We knew he was fast, and then all of a sudden, that catch-and-run at UAB (an 88-yard touchdown) … we were like, ‘I don’t know, that’s different.’ The GPS says one thing and then that happened and we’re like, ‘Let’s keep trying that.'”

88-yards for the FRESHMAN!

Tune in to ESPN2: https://t.co/NRLoiiaLNx pic.twitter.com/CnmwJL0JP1

— Georgia Football (@GeorgiaFootball) September 11, 2021

Georgia did a good job of moving Bowers around; he finished his career with 876 snaps as an inline tight end, 818 in the slot, 214 as a wide receiver and 41 in the backfield.

“We were able to throw some defenses off,” Bowers said at the NFL Scouting Combine. “It was awesome playing under (Monken). We were able to install things the week before a game, make everything look the same and find the defense’s soft spots.”

Bulldogs tight ends coach Todd Hartley said Bowers was the hardest-working kid he’s ever met.

“He’s got extreme talent, he can run, he can jump, he can catch, he’s tough. But what makes him special to me is his competitiveness,” Hartley told reporters last season. “He gets pissed off when I take him off the field to get another kid some reps, (asking) what he did wrong. He wants to be great.”

Said Jones-Drew: “I have never seen him plateau. He just keeps getting better and better and better.”

As a kid in Napa, Bowers would check out the Oakland Raiders’ training camp — at Bowers’ middle school behind the Napa Valley Marriott.

“It’s kind of cool how things come full circle like that,” Bowers said after being drafted. “Derek Carr was there, and I got an autograph from him, so that was pretty sweet.”

This summer, Bowers will be the one signing the autographs.

(Top photo: Joshua L. Jones / USA Today)