Why the Raiders should keep looking Tre Tucker's way

Oct 22, 2026 at 10:40 AM

Raiders Columnist

"Professional football has a maxim of take what they give you. We have always operated under a different philosophy of take what we want…we were going deep and you had to prove, during the game, that you could stop us." - Al Davis on the Raiders' vertical offensive game

Yeah, you can teach someone how to catch a football. But you cannot teach speed.

And when it comes to Tre Tucker, it is the Raiders wideout who continually puts on a clinic…in both endeavors. Which means it's up to the Raiders to study up on both ancient and recent history and take advantage.

And with the deep ball ingrained in the Raiders' DNA, as noted above by the late Raiders owner, Kirk Cousins hitting Tucker with a bomb should be the norm, rather than the exception, right?

And then some.

"You know, that's something, it just depends," Tucker told me with a nervous laugh during an interview on the Raiders Podcast Network. "A lot goes on with what the defense is doing … the flow of the game. There's so much that goes into it that people don't know. And coach [Klint] Kubiak does a great job of putting us in position to go execute those plays and, trust me, they're all over the tape that we can do it.

"It just depends on what the defense is doing - how's the flow of the game? Are we up? Are we down? There's so many little things in the game that people don't realize, that as players and coaches, we do, on the daily and on the weekly, to be able to execute plays like that. Of course we'd love to have those all the time. But when they're called, we have to execute."

Such as late in the fourth quarter, trailing by 10, when Cousins unfurled a ball 44 yards into the end zone - it actually traveled about 60 yards in the air - and Tucker, having blown by a pair of Bills defensive backs, went horizontal.

Tucker hauled the ball in for a highlight reel score and the Raiders were within three points with 92 seconds to play.

"Best conditioned athlete I've ever been around," Kubiak said of Tucker.

So, what goes through Tucker's mind as he sprints on a go-pattern?

Can he hear the crowd inhale in excitement?

Did he know the ball was coming to him as he split and raced by cornerback Davison Igbinosun and safety Jalon Kilgore to the end zone?

"It's a great feeling," Tucker said. "When you see [the ball], it's like a thrill of excitement. The mentality we have is, it's ours or nobody's … and Kirk threw a tremendous ball and it ended up in a big play.

"The best thing you can do is run every time as if you are getting the ball, so that way you're not surprised by it … because you never know what the quarterback's seeing. So you've just got to trust your keys and for me, one of my goals is to always play fast. Every play."

Tucker knows no other way. Remember, this is a guy who has been clocked running a 40 in as fast as 4.29 seconds.

"He's fast," Cousins said with a smile. "I mean, he can roll. Everybody's fast in this league, and I used to joke that there's certain guys, like in high school when you play in high school, you hear about these guys that are unbelievable. And you go see them, you're like, 'Oh yeah, they jump out.'

"That starts to dwindle in college, and it dwindles even more in the NFL because everybody's good."

But Cousins, in his 15th NFL season, ticked off the names of several speedsters with whom he's played.

Burners like Adrian Peterson, Percy Harvin, Brandon Banks, DeSean Jackson and Aldrick Robinson.

"Guys where you're just watching and you're like, 'Whoa,'" Cousins added. "But Tre has speed where, [when I'm] throwing to him, it's like I've thrown to a fair number of guys over my career, and he can roll. There's only a handful of them at the very top … where it's like I can just hit the launch button and don't really have to worry about overthrowing them.

"And I put Tre in that category."

Tucker, who has 24 catches for 371 yards and 3 TDs, is tied for the league lead with three catches of at least 40 yards.

And as the late Al Davis insisted, the Raiders offense should take what it wants rather than taking what the defense gives it.

Dialing Tucker's No. 1, and doing so earlier in games, would seemingly be an elixir for what ails the Raiders offense in the first 15 minutes after halftime. Remember, the Raiders have been outscored by a cumulative 52-26 in the third quarter thus far this season and have only scored three third-quarter points their last three games combined.

Beyond being fast, the 5-foot-8, 182-pound Tucker is also strong; he once squatted 600 pounds, in college.

"That's explosive," Tucker said with a grin. "That's explosive. People would say because I'm shorter and I'm lower to the ground so I don't have as far to go, maybe that's true. But I'm very compact. … I'm not as tall, so I'm able to hold muscle better than some people."

Inevitably, it comes down to speed, though, and as cornerback Eric Stokes said, opposing DBs always mention Tucker's quicks to him after games.

"They're like, 'Dang, I didn't know 1 was that fast,'" Stokes said.

"And I just laugh - he can run all day, too. The way he works, the way he trains, that's just tremendous kudos to Tre. I see it every day to where, Hey, you better have your hamstrings ready and loose up because, hey, he's fittin' to run."

And catch.

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Las Vegas Raiders safety Jeremy Chinn (11) before practice at Intermountain Health Performance Center.