‘Alpha of alphas’: How Tyler Linderbaum became a Raiders rebuild cornerstone

Tyler Linderbaum was lifting weights, a freshman antiaircraft tackle at Iowa, when a staffer told him manager Kirk Ferentz summoned him to chat in his bureau afterward. Linderbaum assumed he was in trouble, possibly for an interaction of too much amusement as the Hawkeyes prepared to play Mississippi State at the Outback Bowl in Tampa, Florida. Hoping for the best but prepared for the worst as he ambled from the weight room up the stairs, Linderbaum sat in Ferentz’s bureau — thereby changing the course of his career. “Part of my occupation is to look at the big picture … and I just didn’t see anybody that I felt similar was what we were looking for as a center,” said Ferentz, the country’s longest tenured coach. “I suggest. I don’t mandate. At least I try not to mandate. I try to always make it a suggestion.” Suggestion accepted. Position switched. Contract with the Las Vegas Raiders signed. Linderbaum in the past 8 years has made himself 1 of the world’s top centers, a cornerstone of the Raiders rebuild and the NFL’s highest-paid interior violative lineman ever. Las Vegas signed him to anchor its line, and at 26 he’s approaching his prime with hands like a heavyweight and feet like a featherweight, tied together by a penchant to punish. A tractor in the run game and pillar in the pass game who played his first 4 seasons for the Baltimore Ravens before paving the way for a Week 1 triumph connected his first Sunday in a Raiders uniform, Linderbaum said Thursday greeting he’s living the “dream” he conceived in Solon, Iowa. Population 3,399. “Tyler’s not 1 to ever hide wherever he came from and what he had to do to get wherever he is and the people that contributed to his maturation and his improvement that afforded him the opportunities to scope his potential