Las Vegas native Kyu Blu Kelly has been Raiders’ biggest training camp riser

Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

Once considered an ascending NFL Draft prospect, Raiders cornerback Kyu Blu Kelly’s first two years in the league didn’t go according to plan.

Kelly, who ultimately slipped to the fifth round of the 2023 NFL draft where he was taken by the Baltimore Ravens, bounced around to four different teams as a rookie. He caught on in Las Vegas last season, but was mostly on the practice squad before getting elevated to the active roster late in the year, primarily to play special teams.

Coming home proved the best move for the Bishop Gorman graduate, however, as the steadying influence of his father — Brian Kelly, an 11-year NFL veteran cornerback who started on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 2002 Super Bowl team — helped him get his mind right.

“He just always told me, ‘Your time will come. You don’t know when, you don’t know how, but just be mentally ready’ because he said I have all the physical tools,” Kyu Blu Kelly said.

The time has now come.

The 24-year-old Kelly has spent the last week and a half splitting first-team repetitions with rookie cornerback Darien Porter in practice. In the Raiders’ lone home preseason game of the year Saturday against the 49ers, Kelly made the first start of his professional career.

And it’s unlikely to be the last. Raiders coach Pete Carroll said he was “really impressed” with Kelly’s performance for the second consecutive preseason game.

“Kyu Blu has really, really made the push now,” Carroll said. “He’s really come on, and he’s done a really nice job. He played well again, and he’s aggressive and comfortable and making things happen.”

Carroll has made “competition” the ethos of his 52-year coaching career, preaching that every job on the depth chart is up for grabs every day. No one has been a better practitioner of that idea than Kelly with the Raiders.

Kelly spent early offseason practices into the start of training camp as a third- or fourth-string cornerback.

A month ago, few, if any, would have projected him to make the cut down from the 90-man training camp roster to the official 53-man group on Aug. 26. Even going into the opening preseason game at the Seattle Seahawks, Kelly was considered on the fringes of the roster at best.

But he capitalized on his opportunities in the Seattle game, breaking up a pair of passes and nearly coming away with an interception.

Now Kelly appears to be a virtual lock to make the roster with the only question being how much of a workload he gets in the regular season.

“It’s like the switch went on, and he’s taken off,” Carroll said. “I'm really fired up for him, man. Those kinds of stories, I love to see guys come out of a backup situation and then work their way through and start to make a statement.”

When the Raiders traded away returning starting cornerback Jakorian Bennett earlier this month, it was seen as a vote of confidence in Porter and second-year player Decamerion Richardson.

The pair were competing for the right to start on the opposite side of free agent acquisition Eric Stokes, who’s played exclusively with the first team all summer. But Kelly has since crashed the party.

Porter has been inconsistent, looking NFL-ready one day and then green the next, and Richardson's early training-camp hot streak has cooled. Kelly has suddenly emerged as the surest of the group as even Stokes has given up more completions in the preseason.

“Whenever I got the chance again to compete and really shoot for something, I knew I was going to be ready to do it,” Kelly said. “Because the first time, I couldn’t.”

Carroll coincidentally was part of Kelly’s nomadic rookie season when the Seahawks claimed the cornerback off waivers after the Ravens cut him.

Kelly spent the first half of Carroll’s final season in Seattle on the roster, never receiving any defensive snaps but playing a handful on special teams.

But Carroll and the Seahawks released Kelly before Week 10 of the season to free up a roster spot. Kelly took the news in stride. He went on to have short stints with the Green Bay Packers and Washington Commanders that season, but he always felt strongly about his time in Seattle.

When Carroll was hired in Las Vegas this offseason, Kelly saw it as a positive instead of a reason to fret about his future.

“I think he just knew I was a competitor,” Kelly said of Carroll. “When I came in in Seattle, it was just I was fresh off the plane, put on my pads and just went out there and made plays each and every day. He respected that all the way until the end where he had to make a tough decision that he might have not wanted to make. He had to do what he had to do.”

Carroll admitted that he hadn’t seen enough out of Kelly all the way up to the start of training camp, but that’s all changed lately. The coach particularly likes Kelly’s versatility; he might be the only cornerback jockeying for a starting position that’s gotten work lining up both outside and in the slot.

It’s a major final stretch of training camp for Kelly. What he does from here on out, including in the final preseason game at the Arizona Cardinals on Saturday, will determine his role. He’s already climbed further up the depth chart than anyone else on the roster, and now he has the chance to complete it.

“Dream come true,” Kelly said. “There were nights when I didn’t really know how it was going to happen. I just daydreamed, ‘It could be this team, or it could be that team.’ I never thought it would be the Raiders. Being back home is so blessed. I’m just thankful for it.”