Gutierrez: For Jonah Laulu, getting home has two meanings – Vegas roots and quarterback pursuits

Dec 05, 2025 at 01:45 PM

Paul Gutierrez

Raiders Columnist

Jonah Laulu was pulling off a freeway in Indianapolis, minutes away from the Colts facility, to sign a contract to join the team's practice squad on August 28, 2024, when the display screen on the defensive tackle's car came to life.

It was a text from his agent.

YOU'RE GETTING CLAIMED BY THE RAIDERS…HOLD ON…I'M CONFIRMING IT.

Laulu, drafted by the Colts in the seventh round that spring but released at the end of training camp, did a double take as he exited the freeway and found a hotel parking lot to take it all in.

"My heart dropped," Laulu recalled on the most recent episode of Upon Further Review. "I was like, Wait, what?

"I just couldn't drive anymore. I needed to just stop because it was like the world stopped and my heart dropped and my heart was beating. I just got out of the car and was walking, like pacing around outside. I was like, 'Wait, what do you mean I'm going home?'"

So truly began Laulu's NFL Life, a journey that began in Las Vegas at Centennial High School on the northwest side of the valley, continued with four years at Hawaii, was extended by another two seasons at Oklahoma and included the Colts drafting him before cutting him and the Raiders, who had played host to him on their local pro day, swooping in.

Neither the local kid making good nor the Raiders have looked back since.

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Not with Laulu getting off to such a quick start this season - four sacks in the Raiders' first six games - and being a bright spot for a 2-10 team in desperate need of them.

Laulu's four sacks in those first six games were tied with Bill Pickel (1983) for the third-most by a Raiders defensive tackle in their first six games of a season, trailing only Pickel (6.0 sacks in 1984) and, yes, Pickel again (4.5 in 1986).

This after Laulu started seven of 17 games as a rookie last season and had one sack in 2024, taking down the Falcons' Kirk Cousins.

Thus far this season, Laulu has started 10 of 12 games and not only boasts those four sacks - getting the Patriots' Drake Maye, the Chargers' Justin Herbert (twice) and Titans rookie Cam Ward - but his five passes defensed are tied for seventh-most in the NFL among defensive linemen, one fewer than perennial Pro Bowl teammate Maxx Crosby.

It's all part of Laulu's maturation process.

"He's getting more instinctual," said fellow Raiders defensive tackle Thomas Booker IV. "That allows him to play more fluid, and allows him to make more plays because he's seeing things more quickly and he's playing more calm. I think that happens to all of us as the year goes along - you play more football, your muscle memory's going up and as a result, it allows you to play with instincts and not thinking.

"Every elite athlete is better when he's playing and not thinking."

Sense a trend yet?

It's the same mentality that drives All-Pro tight end Brock Bowers, who said the more he thinks on the field, the less he'll be able to perform.

This is not to compare Laulu to Bowers, but they are both young players on a team looking for young pieces to build around, right?

Right.

And while Laulu's football life journey back to Las Vegas has been a circuitous one - the Raiders broke ground on Allegiant Stadium in the fall semester of his senior year of high school - his journey to the quarterback is anything but.

It's an adrenaline rush.

"First is a surge of excitement," Laulu said. "You're filled with energy. Excited. Happy. Getting to the quarterback, especially from the interior, is as hard as it is already. And then you celebrate with your guys and then afterwards, then you get hit with the tired.

"You're like, 'Whoa, I'm tired now.' Maxx even says it himself - because he never gets tired - the only time you get tired is when you celebrate, because you just get so excited."

Booker laughed.

"He's a high-effort guy," Booker said of Laulu. "And he can also rush his ass off. So when that combines, you have those stretches of games where, shoot, you can get four [sacks] in six [games], or even more. I think the sky's the limit for him."

While Laulu has not had a sack since Week 6, he is still second on the team, behind Crosby and his eight sacks.

Literally and figuratively, it's about getting home for Laulu.

Just like that day he had to pull over into a nondescript Indianapolis hotel parking lot to make sense of what his agent was texting him.

After all, Laulu figured he'd head back to Las Vegas for a few days to see family after signing that practice squad deal with the Colts before returning to Indianapolis to start the season.

Instead…

"I was like, Oh, I guess I'm really going home," he laughed. "And when I got here, my sisters were there at the hotel to pick me up already and then took me to my mom's house and it was just crazy."

Almost as crazy as going from Sin City to Paradise to Middle America to the Heartland back to Sin City, and watching Allegiant Stadium rise from the desert on every trip home.

"Every time I say I'm from Vegas people say, 'Oh, you live on The Strip?' I'm like, 'No, bro,'" Laulu laughed.

"I didn't think I'd be playing in there … It's crazy to be able to be here, back home, after everywhere I've been. But yeah, the stadium, they built it fast. I ain't gonna lie."

No lies detected.

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Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Aidan O'Connell (12) and assistant special teams coach Kade Rannings during practice at Intermountain Health Performance Center.