The Las Vegas Raiders started Day 3 of the 2026 NFL Draft without the opening pick, then moved to get it back. General Manager John Spytek worked his phone early and kept at it in the fourth round, and Las Vegas traded up one spot to No. 101 overall to make the first move of the day.
The Raiders sent the Buffalo Bills a seventh-round pick in the 2027 NFL Draft to jump from No. 102 and take cornerback Jermod McCoy out of the University of Tennessee. McCoy, 6-1 and 188 pounds, was viewed by many evaluators as a first-round pick and was expected by many to come off the board on opening night before concern over a knee injury pushed him into the fourth round.
That made the trade more than a small shuffle in the draft order. Las Vegas viewed the move as necessary to land the player it wanted next, even with the cost of giving up a future pick to do it. In a draft where the Raiders had already been forced to wait for their first selection of Day 3, the front office decided the gap was too risky to leave in place.
The original No. 102 spot would have been only one pick later, but that one-pick difference mattered because it put the Raiders in position to secure McCoy before another team could decide the knee concern was worth the gamble. That is the sharp edge of draft-day value: a player many teams still saw as first-round talent sitting in the fourth round, with one move deciding whether he stayed available.
For Spytek and the Raiders, the message was plain. They were not content to wait and hope the board would come back to them, and they were not willing to let a player they graded higher slip away over a small price in 2027.