Raiders add Vic Beasley to practice squad, claim Takk McKinley off waivers

If you’re the Las Vegas Raiders and your pass rush has largely struggled to get going, you need to look outside your organization for help. If you’re a fan of the Atlanta Falcons, the last place you’d probably expect the Raiders to look for that help is Vic Beasley and Takk McKinley, but here we are.

Per a number of reports, the Raiders have claimed Takk McKinley off waivers and added Vic Beasley to their practice squad. With a looming game against the Falcons, this feels a bit like trolling to me.

The addition of Takk is an interesting one. The veteran defensive end was abruptly cut by the Falcons after taking complains to Twitter, the culmination of what sure seems like a slow-boiling conflict between the pass rusher and the team. Since then, he’s been picked up by the Bengals and 49ers but has failed physicals with both. There’s no guarantee the same fate won’t await him in Las Vegas, but if he gets healthy and winds up there, he’ll be one of their better pass rushing options more or less by default. It’s an ideal landing spot for him in many ways, assuming he stays there.

Beasley washed out in Tennessee after signing a pricey one year deal there. His final year in Atlanta wasn’t what he or the team hoped, but he did manage 8 sacks and 18 pressures for the Falcons and parlayed that into a contract with the Titans. After a weird summer where he reported late to training camp, he managed zero sacks and zero pressures in five games and wound up cut, and has been looking for a job since. Again, the pass rush starved Raiders are probably the ideal landing spot for him to try to revitalize his career, and we’ll see if he can get on to the active roster and contribute.

I don’t doubt for a second that Las Vegas likes both players enough to see if they can contribute, but it’s probably not a coincidence that they’re signing two players who spent time with the Falcons recently enough to provide some helpful thoughts about their defense. The rolling Raiders offense probably doesn’t need any help in that regard, though, so we’ll just see if Takk and Beasley can wind up making it as Raiders where they could not as Falcons.