Now at the heavy lifting is done when it comes to free agency, we start to turn our attention to the upcoming NFL draft.

We know who's at number one, at least we think.

But who else and what else should the Raiders be targeting?

That plus more on Tuesday's edition of the Locked On Raiders podcast for March 17th, 2026.

You are Locked on Raiders, your daily Las Vegas Raiders podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. And welcome, A Raider Nation, to another edition of the Locked-on Raiders podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your number one sports podcast network. We're very proud of that. We're also very proud of the fact that this show continues to grow each and every day. That's because of your support and the great job that my man Ari does behind the scenes on the YouTube page, making sure we look good and sound good each and every day. As a matter of fact, when it comes to the YouTube page, we're number two right now across the network, right? So it's the locked on bills and then locked on Raiders right behind that. So again, that is 100% credit to Ari. That's why I shout him out each and every day because I do want to let it be known who's doing the heavy lifting and how proud I am that he's doing the great work he's doing and making this show look and sound as good each and every day by way of the YouTube pay. So shout out to Ari. He's on Twitter at Ari Producers. You can hit me up as well at your boy Q254. And if you want to be a part of the show,

we've got the Lockdown Raider podcast voicemail line for you. 707-654-4693. We'll get to calls and text as we normally do close out the show hearing from you. A lot of great feedback, as you can imagine, on many different subjects. Segment number two, we'll start to talk about the NFL draft. We already have a great idea who they're going to pick in number one. No more do they

have picked number 14. So that kind of changes the

outlook of the draft a little bit, makes it a little bit boring as well, because now they

got to wait till pick number 36 if they stick and pick before they get their second round

pick. But we'll still start to talk about different position groups at the

very least that they could be targeted. And here is segment number one news and notes of the day,

as we always do. And as I mentioned at the top of the show, the heavy lifting's been done in free agency,

right? All the big ticket guys are already signed sealed and delivered. Tyler Lyndonbaum,

big ticket guy, right? Quitty Pay, big ticket guy. Quay Walker, big ticket guy, right? Speedy Naylor, big ticket guy. All those guys, signed, seal, and delivered. The Raiders took care of all that. Nacobie Dean, right? They brought in a lot of really good younger starters, as far as I'm concerned, guys that can contribute to the team immediately. Now you're going to start to see the Connor Haywards.

You know, like that was last week when they made that official with the fullback from the Pittsburgh Steelers. And on Monday, pretty early on Monday, as a matter of fact, they came to an agreement with linebacker Sagan, Alubi. He joins the Raiders after four seasons with the Colts where he appeared in 51 games, recorded 20 tackles, one pass defense, and interception, two force fumbles, two fumble recoveries, and two block punts also registered 30 tackles on special teams the most on the Colts over that span. The two block punts, something to pay attention to. One of those block punts, that was against the Raiders and A.J. Cole. If you remember when the Colts played the Raiders in 2025 and they had that big block early in the game really shifted the momentum of that game. Yeah, that was a Luby that came through with that. So now he's on the Raiders. He's a core special teams guy, right? I mean, I know he plays a linebacker position, but this is really a guy that's going to be a core special teams guy.

And look, this is something that the Raiders need to focus in on. It's funny, I was talking to Kirk Morrison on my radio show on Monday, and I kept asking them, like, why is special teams always been a struggle for the Raiders? And look, I know AJ Cole and Daniel Carlson, they were a really good one-two punch, but kick coverage has been okay okay kick return hasn't been great right and they just

haven't had a really good special teams unit and so joe day camillis comes in as a special team's

coordinator and he's looking for his guys and one thing that kirk pointed out was cue when you continue

to have new coaches come in and new staffs come in these guys that were even even supposed to be special teams, core special teams guy, they start to rotate and you start to not bring those guys back and you're starting to look for other guys. And so it's just, it doesn't work out very well. And then, you know, it was pretty obvious as well. You know, Tom McMahon got fired halfway through the season last year. He was a special team's coordinator. So that is an area of the team that continues to need to be worked on, right? There's going to be some guys that are going to be some guys of core special teams guys. There's some guys on the roster right now that are going to be able to, you know, get on the field by way of special teams. But that unit needs to really be addressed and taken care of, you know, we always say there's three phases to the game. There's offense, defense, and special teams, but so often special teams gets ignored until there's a problem. And then it's like, man, what happened with that special teams unit? So, Luby comes in, again, core special teams guy, day Kamala's guy, and we'll see how they start to put that together. But those are the kind of deals that you're going to see from now on. You're not going to see any big ticket guys. So that's where it is at this stage of the game. Also, as we're going to talk about the draft coming up in segment number two, I did want you to hear from Brian Baldinger. Always does a really good job on the Baldi's breakdowns. used to have them on the show all the time having those breakdowns. And I know that he really is doing a film breakdown.

So a lot of times when he says, see right here, see right here, you can't see it, but you can understand what he's trying to say. And he had a piece floating around on social media on Monday about Fernando Mendoza. And he was saying that everything you need to know about Mendoza, you can see

versus Ohio State in the Big Ten championship games.

So here's Brian Baldinger, just a couple minutes on Fernando Mendoza.

...