With quarterbacks flying off the board at the top of the 2024 NFL Draft, Brock Bowers wasn't quite sure where he was going to land.
One team he didn't see coming was the one who called him.
Bowers would go on to turn in a rookie season for the ages with the Las Vegas Raiders, who most certainly took him by surprise on draft day.
"It's actually kind of funny, it's always like the team you least expect to pick you," Bowers said on the Bussin' With The Boys podcast recently, via Raiders.com’s Levi Edwards. "I didn't talk to them a ton, I talked to other teams a lot more and then all of a sudden I'm sitting there on draft night and I get a call. Me and my agent are talking and Las Vegas isn't even in the picture really. ... All of a sudden I get a call and it says Las Vegas, Nevada.
"I said, 'Should I pick this up?' and he said, 'Hell yeah pick it up!'"
Bowers picked it up, was taken 13th overall after the rival Denver Broncos took Bo Nix at No. 12 as the sixth QB selected, and proceeded to make rookie history.
The Georgia product posted 112 receptions for 1,194 yards and five touchdowns.
His catches set a new rookie record for any position, while his yardage eclipsed Hall of Famer Mike Ditka's rookie tight end record set in 1963. In any other year, Bowers would've been a slam dunk for AP Offensive Rookie of the Year. However, as he starred for a struggling 4-13 Raiders squad, Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels and Nix led their squads to the playoffs. Daniels was scintillating and garnered OROTY, but it hardly diminished Bowers' brilliance in Vegas.
As he approached the record books, Bowers was hesitant to embrace the history, but couldn't help but be enamored with the acclaim his success warranted.
"I was trying the hardest not to think about it," Bowers said. "But at the same time when you see everything [on the internet] and you're getting tagged in stuff and it's like, 'Oh man, he might break these records' and stuff. It's pretty crazy seeing all that and looking back on it, it's pretty cool."
Now Bowers will look to follow up his first-year excellence in a largely different setting.
After hauling in passes from Gardner Minshew and Aidan O'Connell, Bowers will be targeted by new Raiders starting QB Geno Smith. Smith was brought in via trade to join his former head coach Pete Carroll and first-year general manager John Spytek.
Bowers, meanwhile, was coached in 2024 by Antonio Pierce and selected by Tom Telesco.
None of that should matter much for a talent of the ilk of Bowers, who earned Pro Bowl and All-Pro accolades as a rookie.
Regardless, Bowers is prepping for his sophomore NFL season just the same as he's always done, aiming to win every snap.
"I'm just really big into winning every single rep and like trying to do that in the offseason," he said. "During OTAs I'm trying to do that and just pisses me off when I don't do that. So, it just pushes me to get better in every single facet I think. Because I feel like there's not one thing I did great, but not one thing I did super duper bad. I'm just trying to elevate everything."
