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Dec 9, 2025
Raiders' quest for No. 1 pick will hinge largely on NFL Week 14 results
Just Blog Baby
The Las Vegas Raiders are going to need a serious influx of young talent if they want to turn this thing around. Typically, the best way to do that is by collecting picks for the NFL Draft and using them wisely, which is much, much easier said than done.
First-year general manager John Spytek, however, got creative during last April's draft, trading back several times and eventually making 11 selections in the event. The Raiders are set to have 10 more picks in next year's draft, depending on how the compensatory pick formula shakes out.
Where exactly those picks will be, however, is yet to be determined. Las Vegas is currently in a battle for the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft with several other teams that currently have three or fewer wins. The results of Week 14's games will go a long way in determining the eventual order.
If the 2025 NFL season ended today, the Raiders would have the No. 4 pick in the draft, behind the Tennessee Titans, New York Giants and New Orleans Saints. To clear the path to the top pick, however, Las Vegas needs those teams to win. Here's what that would look like in Week 14:
New York is on a bye this weekend, and because it currently holds the tiebreaker for having a lower strength of schedule, the Raiders aren't likely to jump up to No. 1 after this week. But Las Vegas controls its own destiny, in a way, because it plays the Giants in Week 17.
The Titans currently have a higher strength of schedule than the Raiders, so with a win against the Browns on Sunday, which seems at least reasonable, Las Vegas would move up a spot in the draft order. They'd move up another spot if the two-win Saints can pull off an upset against the Bucs.
As mentioned, strength of schedule is the first tiebreaker when determining the NFL Draft order, and the lower it is, the closer a team gets to the top of the draft board. These games will have major strength of schedule ramifications, because they either lower the Raiders' or higher an opponent'
