Where the Raiders’ 2021 draft class ended up, and why Jon Gruden and Mike Mayock’s last haul is still debated

The Raiders’ 2021 NFL draft class remains a central reference point for how quickly talent grading turns into roster outcomes. In a retrospective published by Yahoo Sports, the focus is on the 2021 class as Jon Gruden and Mike Mayock’s final draft with Las Vegas, a haul that the piece characterizes as another disappointment during an era of high expectations and aggressive roster-building.

The article’s premise is simple: teams can draft for immediate needs, but the longer-term value of a class is ultimately measured by durability, impact play, and whether the organization’s next coaching and front-office group can retain or reshape the roster around those players. Even without revisiting every player in detail here, the framing matters because the Raiders’ recent history has repeatedly featured “then vs. now” comparisons tied to 2021 decisions.

At the center of the retrospective is tackle Alex Leatherwood, a first-round selection in the 2021 class. The piece treats Leatherwood and his fellow draftees as a case study in how an investment can become a moving target once scheme preferences, coaching philosophies, and developmental timelines change. That is a practical reality in the NFL, where one class can be judged very differently depending on what followed in the next two to three years.

Yahoo Sports also places the draft within context: Las Vegas was still establishing itself as a franchise identity in the league, and the 2021 class arrived during a late-Gruden and Mayock transition window. In that environment, draft picks carry added weight because they are both roster tools and indicates. When the expected “core” does not emerge, the cost shows up later, when the team needs to rebuild more expensively through additional draft capital, trades, or free agency.

The most important takeaway from a retrospective like this is not simply whether any single pick hit or missed. It is the accumulation of evaluation risk. In the NFL, draft classes rarely produce identical outcomes across positions. For some selections, value may arrive later, while others can fade due to scheme fit or depth-chart competition. That makes “where are they now” a meaningful, but incomplete, way to judge a class because it can blend player-specific paths with organizational decisions made after the draft.

For Raiders fans, the question that lingers from the 2021 class is how those early returns shaped the roster picture in subsequent seasons and how quickly the team could pivot from uncertainty. The next step for readers is to verify, player by player, what the current situation is for each member of that class, including whether they are still in the NFL, whether they changed teams, and what roles they hold now.

In the absence of an official Raiders roster timeline for each 2021 pick within this specific write-up, the safest interpretation is that the debate over 2021 is part of a larger pattern: a team can draft with conviction and still end up rebuilding sooner than planned. That is why retrospectives like this remain popular. They connect front-office decision-making to the lived reality of roster management.