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Brock Bowers injury update is concerning for Raiders star's Week 2 status

The status of Las Vegas Raiders star tight end Brock Bowers is up in the air after he suffered a knee injury in Week 1.

Bowers appeared to tweak his knee in the second half of the game against the New England Patriots and is now on the injury report this week. The former No. 13 overall pick in 2024 didn't practice on Thursday, either.

Before practice, Bowers was non-committal about playing in Week 2, but did note that he's feeling better.

“Feeling a little better. Just working on it," Bowers said of his injury. “I’m not sure, we’ll see how it’s feeling throughout the week, but I’m hoping to play.”

While that's a positive update overall, one Raiders beat writer came away thinking that Bowers isn't going to play in Week 2.

Brock Bowers injury update

On the Locked On Raiders podcast, beat writer Q. Myers revealed that Bowers was sporting a wrap on his leg on Thursday. Myers also got the impression that Bowers won't play in Week 2.

“All the reports coming out of [the Patriots] game was that he would be fine to go back into the game if they really needed him. They held him out for precautionary purposes. But seeing the compression sleeve on his leg, the entire leg on Thursday inside the Raiders locker room, definitely had cause for a concern,” said Myers.

“To me, I walked away from [Bowers comments] feeling like, ‘Yeah, it doesn’t sound like he’s going to go.’ That’s just my gut feeling. Nobody’s telling me that. That’s just based off of Vinny [Bonsignore] asking about his knee and me asking, do you expect to play? And again, when he says he’ll see, you know, obviously he wants to be out there… He wanted to be out there on Sunday, but it really doesn’t sound like he’s going to play. He was very hesitant to say that he’s going to play.”

To be fair, Bowers' response is pretty typical for a player who isn't a lock to suit up. That said, it's very conceivable the Raiders will hold him out for a game to make sure he doesn't aggravate his injury.

After all, it's only Week 2 and there's still a long season ahead of us. The Raiders can ill-afford to lose their best offensive player and they'd be risking exactly that should Bowers play at less than 100%.

What Bowers has working for him is that he's got an extra day to get his knee right with the Raiders playing on Monday night, so that helps his chances of taking the field against the Los Angeles Chargers.

If Bowers doesn't play, Michael Mayer will become Las Vegas' No. 1 tight end, with Ian Thomas getting a push up the depth chart, also.