Jonah Laulu

7th-round pick → year-2 rotation regular → 4 sacks and 8 TFL on a contending Raiders DL.

Oklahoma DL, 7th-round pick by the Colts in 2024 — waived, picked up by Las Vegas. He played 12 games as a rookie in a small role.

The year-2 jump is dramatic: 4x the sacks, nearly double the TFLs, and full 17-game availability. He's gone from a depth player to the Raiders' second-most-productive DL pass rusher behind Maxx Crosby.

Top-10 sack producer in the entire 2024 NFL Draft DL class — in his second year.

Laulu was the 220th overall pick in the 2024 draft. Sitting at 9th in sacks in his draft class — ahead of higher-pedigree names like Orhorhoro (2nd round) and just behind Newton (2nd round) — is the kind of Day-3 hit-rate outcome teams build entire DL depth charts around.

Week 2 vs LAC: 2 sacks, 3 QB hits, 3 TFLs — career game.

In a single Week 2 game against the Chargers, Laulu produced 2 sacks, 3 QB hits, and 3 TFLs — accounting for half his career sacks and over a third of his 2025 TFLs in one afternoon.

That one game alone would have matched his entire 2024 splash-play count. It's the game that put him on the season-long rotation, not the other way around.

Tied for 2nd on the Raiders DL in sacks — only Maxx Crosby has more.

Crosby is the alpha (10 sacks). After him, the Raiders' DL pressure is committee-by-design — and Laulu is in the second tier alongside Tyree Wilson (2023 7th overall pick) and Malcolm Koonce.

For a 7th-rounder in year 2 to be matching that production from those investments is the kind of cost-controlled depth the Raiders have struggled to find on the interior since the Justin Ellis era.