McKinley, Beasley will wait their turn to help Raiders
Anyone who had hopes of Raiders newcomers Takk McKinley and Vic Beasley screaming off the edge to pressure former Falcons teammate Matt Ryan got a dose of reality Friday from coach Jon Gruden.
McKinley, the former firstround draft pick out of UCLA by way of Richmond’s Kennedy High, won’t be making the trip to Atlanta and has been placed on injured reserve.
Beasley, also a former firstround pick who was released by the Tennessee Titans earlier this month, will likely remain on the practice squad when the Raiders (6-4) visit the Falcons (3-7).
Reclamation projects rarely pay immediate dividends.
Both players were draft selections by the Falcons, Beasley No. 8 overall in 2015 and McKinley No. 26 in 2017.
They arrive hopeful of re-igniting careers which have fallen on hard times. Since the Raiders are ranked 31st in the NFL in sacks with 11, ahead of only the Jacksonville Jaguars, they were only too happy to supply jumper cables.
McKinley got farther with the Raiders than he did with either the Cincinnati Bengals or the 49ers. He was originally waived by the Falcons on Nov. 9 at his request, but failed his physical in Cincinnati because of a groin injury. The 49ers got the next shot based on win-loss record, and they too put him back on waivers.
The Raiders were next, and determined they could put him on the IR to heal and get something out of him before the end of the season.
“Takk McKinley will not be on the trip this week, but he is a big part of our plans for the future,” Gruden said Friday during a teleconference. “I just don’t know how far in the immediate future that is.”
McKinley (6-foot-2, 256 pounds) is only under contract through the rest of the season, and will receive just under $656,000 for six games. He last played on Oct. 25, getting 23 snaps against the Detroit Lions, so he has already had over a month to heal.
In 49 games with the Falcons, McKinley had 25 starts and 17 1/2 sacks. He had 13 sacks in his first two seasons, and 4 1/2 sacks in 18 games over the past two years.
Gruden said both players were part of a long-standing Raiders tradition of giving players second chances and those opportunities
arise through first impressions.
“We’ve always looked at what we thought of these players coming out (of college) to bring them here as soon as possible,” Gruden said. “When McKinley came out of UCLA, when Vic came out of Clemson, I know I liked them both. I know Mike Mayock liked them both.”
Mayock, the Raiders general manager and former NFL.com analyst, rated McKinley the No. 5 edge player in the draft after
Myles Garrett of Texas A&M, Solomon Thomas of Stanford, Charles Harris of Missouri and Derek Barnett of Tennessee. In other interviews, Mayock also thought highly of T.J. Watt of Wisconsin.
It’s a measure of how tricky it is to assess draft talent that only two of that group — Garrett at No. 1 to Cleveland and Watt at No. 30 to Pittsburgh — have ascended to an elite level.
Beasley had a huge second season with the Falcons, racking up 15 1/2 sacks for a team that went to the Super Bowl. In 51 games since 2016, Beasley had 15 sacks in 51 games.