Raiders insider: Nate Hobbs making big push in secondary

The chip on the shoulder Nate Hobbs promised to carry into his rookie season with the Raiders is no smaller today than when he revealed it last April on draft day.

If anything, it has grown in size and weight since the fifth-round pick pledged to never forget the players who were selected before him. Or, as he explained, “the guys who I feel like didn’t do as much as me but were still picked up.”

And it reveals itself in so many more ways than on the field, where Hobbs continued his push for a starting job in the Raiders secondary with a strong performance in a 20-7 preseason victory over the Seattle Seahawks on Saturday at Allegiant Stadium.

Hobbs got the starting call at slot corner and helped spearhead a strong defensive effort in which the Raiders pitched a first-half shutout.

He is competing with veteran Nevin Lawson and second-year cornerback Amik Robertson in the slot, but with each passing day, he seems to be gaining the inside track.

“We have a lot to look at before we make any conclusions, but we do like our fifth-round pick,” Raiders coach Jon Gruden said.

Among the highlights was a first-quarter sack in which Hobbs came flying off the edge on a corner blitz and buried Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith. The play was originally ruled a sack and fumble, but replay revealed Smith was down before losing control of the football.

“It would have felt better if I got the ball out,” Hobbs said. “But it was fun. It was a good hit.”

Hobbs also held up well in pass coverage and run support and went wire-to-wire on special teams, where his tenacity could be an asset.

But as Gruden is finding out, there is also an energy to the Louisville native and University of Illinois product that is impossible to ignore. And it follows Hobbs wherever he goes.

“There’s just certain guys that bring juice,” Gruden said Saturday. “They bring something to the game that others just … you can’t explain it. He’s one of these guys. He’s into it all the time.”

Pinpointing the origins of the spirit Hobbs brings is an exercise in elusiveness. It’s really just a combination of everything he has been through over an emotional last decade in which he lost his father when he was 12 years old, watched his mother raise four kids on an annual income of $25,000, managed to scrape up just enough high school footage to earn a scholarship at Illinois and then, just as the football world was beginning to open up to him, lost both his grandmother and father-figure uncle between his junior and senior years.

The odds Hobbs beat just to get to Illinois — the only Power Five program that recruited him — let alone land on the Raiders’ draft radar, hardened, strengthened and emotionally wired him to the point where no obstacle is too daunting.

“I got a lot of people who are not here that I play for,” Hobbs said. “I want to make them proud.”

In many ways, Saturday was just the natural next step in Hobbs’ inspiring journey. The path may not always be ideal, but wherever Hobbs lands he has a way of fitting in immediately.

“It’s never too big for him,” Gruden said.

Not even as he took the field for the first time in an NFL game, then immediately gathered himself upon sizing up the stage and atmosphere.

“I’m just thankful for this opportunity,” Hobbs said. “I’m grateful to God. I think he’s blessed me with this opportunity. So I just try to make the most of it.”

Contact Vincent Bonsignore at vbonsignore@reviewjournal.com. Follow @VinnyBonsignore on Twitter