Brock Bowers Camp Update — August 31: The Tight End Room Cuts to Three

Cut day left Brock Bowers with a smaller room. The Raiders' initial 53 carries three tight ends — Bowers, Michael Mayer and Ian Thomas — per Levi Edwards at Raiders.com, after Chris Myarick and Albert Okwuegbunam Jr. were released, per Adam Hill at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Carter Runyon went to injured reserve with a designation to return, eligible around Week Five, per Sam Gordon at the Review-Journal.

Bowers himself generated nothing documentable this week. The finale coverage we read — Gordon's recap of Thursday's 18 to 12 loss to the 49ers — does not mention him at all, so we can't tell you he played and we can't tell you he was held out; the coverage simply doesn't place him on the field either way. Last week's question was whether he'd play the finale, and the honest answer is the record doesn't say. The other number we've been waiting on since June — his targets per game once the games count — stays out of reach until the opener.

One new variable did arrive, and it bears directly on that number: the identity of the quarterback throwing to him is publicly unsettled. Klint Kubiak declined to name a Week One starter on Friday — "We have three guys that are ready to play," with "hard decisions on who's one, who's two," per Hill — and all three quarterbacks made the 53.

For anyone hearing this fresh, the June read on Bowers was a comparison built on volume: his target count sagged last season while a knee injury shadowed the year — 86 targets in 12 games, 64 catches for 680 yards and seven touchdowns, by our 2025 numbers — and the honest counter was that if the knee explains the sag, the argument dies fast. Last week's episode had him as the standout of the Texans joint practice, per Edwards; this week added no evidence in either direction, and we won't let last week's momentum stand in for evidence that didn't arrive. We'll pick the thread back up when the targets are real.

_Data via nflverse._