Mike Washington Camp Update — August 23: Fifty-Six More Yards Against Houston

Mike Washington kept producing this week, in both settings the Raiders played in. At Tuesday's joint practice in Houston he punished linebacker Henry To'oTo'o with a stiff-arm on a touchdown run, per Levi Edwards at Raiders.com, and in Thursday's 22-20 win over the Texans he carried nine times for 56 yards, most of it on a 33-yard burst, per Edwards. That makes two August games and two joint practices in a row where the fourth-round rookie's size-and-speed profile has translated into actual chunk runs. The honest frame stays attached: Thursday's yards came against Houston's reserves with the Raiders' first team held out, and the touchdowns in the comeback went to Dylan Laube and Dare Ogunbowale, per Sam Gordon at the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

One sour cameo: the game's opening possession ended with Texans linebacker Wade Woodaz intercepting a Fernando Mendoza checkdown intended for Washington and returning it 80 yards for a touchdown, per Gordon — a quarterback's mistake by the quarterback's own account, but Washington was the intended target on the play that swung the first half.

For anyone hearing this fresh, the June read on Washington was two-sided and stays two-sided: the Raiders traded up for the fastest back in the draft class because the athlete is real, and nobody is taking the ball from Ashton Jeanty, so every productive August is a backup bet paying its interest, not a job changing hands. Jeanty and the first team did not play Thursday, so the depth-chart order was not even on the field to be tested.

What to watch: Sunday's cutdown to 53, where a backfield that also includes Laube and Ogunbowale gets its final shape, and the carry rotation behind Jeanty in the finale. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._