Tom Telesco fact or fiction: Insights from Chargers writer on Raiders new general manager

Bolts from the Blue answers some questions for Raider Nation about the Silver and Black’s new decision maker.

Free agency is well underway and the NFL Draft is just around the corner, meaning it’s new Las Vegas Raiders general manager Tom Telesco’s time to shine. While it’s his first offseason with the Raiders, this is far from Telesco’s first rodeo after spending over a decade in the same role with the Los Angeles Chargers.

That has led to a few narratives surrounding Las Vegas’ new decision maker and Kyle DeDiminicantanio of Bolts from the Blue was kind enough to weigh in on a few of those topics. DeDiminicantanio has put together a few research projects during Telesco’s tenure in San Diego/Los Angeles and wanted to share a message with Raider Nation before diving into the details.

KD: Before we get started Matt, I just wanted to say thank you to you personally for sending these questions over, and to the Silver and Black community for giving this a read! If some of the answers come off as negative – I can promise it’s not because of the division rivalry!

The roster-building under Tom was something that really frustrated me as a fan for years and was a launching point for many passion-project studies into the various tricks and tools a general manager has at their disposal…leading to further lamenting over why Tom never used them.

However, the hope I would give to Raider Nation is that the rumor mill was ripe with claims that Telesco was more of a blast shield for the Spanos family and that John Spanos was making many of the decisions and hiding behind Tom when success wasn’t achieved.

At worst, he’ll be a very cautious rental GM to pair with your motivating and tone-setting head coach who would benefit from a GM with plenty of operational experience under his belt. Once AP gets a little more experienced if the Tom I know surfaces, my hope for the Raiders would be a short leash and quick transition to someone who really gels with AP.

At best – it’d be great to see Tom learn from his experience with the Bolts and be much more aggressive with filling depth pieces for your roster, making impactful in-season moves, navigating the draft board in a way that builds value, and not relying on free agent signings to routinely fill holes in his roster.

Just my two cents! Wish nothing but the best for ya’ll in 15 games next season!

Question: One of the narratives among Raider Nation surrounding Telesco is that he hits on his early picks but struggles to find the “diamonds in the rough” during the later rounds. Based on your studies, does that hold up?

Answer: There is definitely a narrative out there that Telesco has a solid first (and maybe second) round track record but struggles with later rounds, but I don’t really think either is true. Tom was at his best with the Chargers when he was drafting in the top 15 of the first round, and calmly let the board fall to him.

At times, it drove me nuts. He publicly stated that in 2020 he was happy with all three of the top quarterbacks, and was content with whichever was left once the Bengals and Dolphins made their selections. Things worked out, and Justin Herbert fell to us, but had we ended up with Tua Tagovailoa instead of Justin I’d be pretty disappointed. In other drafts, his patience led to blue-chip players like Rashawn Slater and Derwin James.

Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The real thing that has held Telesco back, and why there’s a narrative that he struggles in later rounds, is he continuously drafted from a pick deficit. He never traded down in the draft in his 11 drafts with the Chargers and executed four trade-ups.

Trading up is fine, if you pair it with other mechanisms that add picks to your inventory, be it through compensatory picks, trading players away while they still have value to outside teams, or occasionally trading down. Tom never seemed to grasp that to have draft success, you want to have as many darts as possible to throw at the dart board.

In 2022, I wanted to see how impactful Tom’s refusal to trade down was on his draft history, so I used Pro Football Reference to pull data on the draft classes from 2014-2021. I chose ‘14 as a starting point since it was Tom’s first draft with a full year of management and scouting under his belt.

I used PFR’s AV (approximate value) metric to assign value to each team’s draft selections and then was able to compare the drafts against one another. Essentially, Tom was a dead-average drafter (ranked 15th) when looking at the average AV gained per pick. However, he ranked 27th in total AV drafted, and 25th when AV accrued was weighed against Jimmy Johnson’s draft capital points spent.

Tom had a total of 55 selections in this eight-draft period, averaging 6.875 picks per draft. The league average, because of compensatory picks, is eight selections per draft. Tom’s average across his 11 years with the Chargers is 6.9 picks/draft. Operating with fewer selections and not ranking above average on a value-per-pick basis essentially stunted the returns on Telesco drafts.

Q: Building on that, how does Telesco’s first- and second-round “hit rate” compare to the NFL Average? Also, did his lack of success in the later stages of the draft have an impact on the Chargers’ depth throughout the years, or was that the result of something else?

A: The best thing I could say about Tom and his draft classes is that he never “missed big” when he picked earlier than 15th overall, outside his first selection of D.J. Fluker. He’s actually had more success in the second round than he’s had with his picks in the late first, anything from the 20th-32nd pick.

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The most frustrating Telesco habit was to waste third-round picks. Tom typically drafts in the first two rounds from a “best player available” perspective and then shifts in the third round a strategy of identifying a blue-chip trait in a player that needs much more refinement before they are NFL-ready.

With JT Woods, it was his speed. With Tre’ McKitty, it was his blocking. Trey Pipkins was sold as having the footwork of a franchise left tackle, he just needed to add some strength to get there. This drove fans nuts, as there is typically still starting-level talent left in the third round, but Tom would look right past it and draft guys that the consensus board had valued as 6th or 7th rounders.

The lack of depth for Chargers squads was largely caused by what I mentioned before – his average of less than seven picks a draft. If the league average is eight selections, and draft selections sign four-year deals, that’s a rolling 3-4 extra entry-level contract players missing from the bottom of your roster each year. This was a self-perpetuating problem for the Chargers as well.

Tom’s lack of draft success and below-average amount of selections meant fewer players were leaving Los Angeles as compensatory free agents and signing big deals elsewhere. Tom kept trying to use free agency as a stop-gap to fill the holes on his rosters, signing 31 compensatory free agents over his 11 seasons.

Because of this, he was only awarded eight compensatory picks over this time, and five of them were seventh-rounders. Teams that know how to manipulate the compensatory pick formula like the Rams and Ravens average around two compensatory picks a draft. The lack of extra picks compounded with the high free-agent spending created top-heavy rosters for the Bolts.

Q: Besides quarterback, two of the Raiders’ biggest needs are at defensive tackle and cornerback. What’s his track record at addressing those positions in the offseason, both free agency and the draft? Who are his best additions and biggest flops?

A: Tom really struggled at drafting defensive tackles and cornerbacks. Jerry Tillery was his highest-drafted defensive tackle but was released in his fourth year with the team. Justin Jones was one of Telesco’s better third-round picks, but he let Jones walk in free agency. There is no resounding “hit” amongst his defensive tackle selections.

However, in free agency, he brought in Linval Joseph and Brandon Mebane. Both players were solid veteran leaders in their years with the Bolts, but again show Tom’s reliance on paying top-dollar on the open market to bring in temporary stop-gaps.

At cornerback, Asante Samuel Jr. deserves a nod as a solid coverage CB who was drafted early, he’s just struggled in the run game. Desmond King was drafted as a slot corner in the 5th round of the 2017 draft, and that was actually one of Tom’s better later-round selections.

His biggest bust at CB was Craig Mager, one of Tom’s third-round developmental projects that never panned out. Identifying cast-off cornerback talent in free agency was actually one of his strengths. Although it was still frustrating to see the reliance on free agency, he got really good value out of players like Patrick Robinson, Brandon Flowers, and Casey Hayward.

Q: Telesco is leaving the Chargers in a bit of a hole financially as they rank 31st in cap space at about $-20.6 million, per Spotrac, heading into the offseason. How responsible is he for that situation? And/or is Los Angeles’ lack of cap room not as big of a deal as it seems, meaning they have a few contracts they can easily get out of to get back into the black?

A: The cap hole Tom left the Chargers in is largely his fault, but it’s not as severe as it seems and wasn’t caused by years of cap abuse like what you see from teams like the Saints. They simply put together a dynamic roster in 2022, headlined by the Khalil Mack acquisition, and fell short by all the injuries that year.

They very clearly gave Telesco and Staley a final chance to get things right and leveraged themselves heavily for one year by restructuring Joey Bosa, Khalil Mack, Mike Williams, and Keenan Allen. What is wildly frustrating is how poorly they performed, but that was mostly the fault of the coaching staff.

Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

A better coach would have done much better with that roster. The one thing Tom should have done was secure a reliable backup at center, as Corey Linsley had some trouble staying healthy the year before and the line crumbled when he was out.

Q: For years, we’ve heard that the Chargers have a great roster but the team has seemingly underachieved. Telesco worked with three head coaches in San Diego/Los Angeles — Mike McCoy, Anthony Lynn and Brandon Staley — with Lynn being the most successful, posting a 33-31 record. How involved was the GM in hiring those coaches or how much is he to blame for the bad hires?

A: This is a great question and one that eludes Chargers fans.

One thing we do know is that Mike McCoy, the first coach hired under Telesco, was mostly hired by a search committee that the Spanos family formed. They wanted to ease Tom into his new role at GM and didn’t stick him with such an important decision so early.

Anthony Lynn was hired next, and it’s hard to tell if that was a Spanos or Telesco decision — Lynn was hired the same day the team announced the move to LA, so the gravity of that decision had to weigh heavily on the family. One thing we appreciated at the time was that Tom surrounded the rookie head coach with two former head coaches as his coordinators, Ken Whisenhunt and Gus Bradley.

Brandon Staley felt like a Telesco pick, and Telesco gave Staley more roster autonomy than we saw in previous years, but the gamble on the flash-in-the-pan defensive coordinator didn’t pay off.

Most fans give the majority of the credit for these poor hires to Dean and John Spanos.