NFL Week 8 Special Teams: Raiders’ Laube Breaks Loose on 95-Yard Return

Dylan Laube’s 95-yard kickoff return touchdown gave the Las Vegas Raiders the standout special teams play of Week 8. The score also showed how much a return depends on its blockers: two clear wins near the 30- and 40-yard lines opened the left sideline, allowing Laube to run untouched into the end zone. That clean lane is the key detail behind the highlight. A returner can make the most of open space, but the blocking in front of him determines whether that space appears at all. This is more significant than it looks: the touchdown was a team result, even though one player carried the ball across the goal line.

Week 8’s grades point to a broader story behind the headline play: Buffalo excelled in several specialist roles, while Denver’s kick return blockers topped the rankings. The figures below focus on gunners, vise players, long snappers, and coverage and return units. Those jobs are easy to miss when a game recap centers on touchdowns or turnovers, yet each can shape field position and the conditions that lead to a big play. The grades offer a snapshot of individual performance, with the listed snap thresholds giving some context about how much work went into each mark. They don’t, by themselves, explain every assignment or team result.

Buffalo leads among specialists

Three Bills stood out in different assignments. Long snapper Reid Ferguson posted an 82.8 PFF grade, the best mark among the five snappers above 80.0. Kaleb Elarms-Orr led qualifying kick coverage players with an 83.3 grade, and Sam Franklin Jr. tied for the highest vise win rate at 40.0%. The spread across three roles makes Buffalo’s showing more notable than a single high score: the team had strong results in the snap, coverage, and blocking matchups represented here. Each task calls for different execution, so these marks shouldn’t be read as interchangeable measures of the same skill.

That vise mark was shared by Washington’s Mike Sainristil. Cincinnati’s Tacario Davis was the only other player with at least three snaps in the role to reach the listed threshold, winning 33.3% of his reps. A vise player works to disrupt a blocker’s release and help create a path for the coverage unit, which makes the win rate a narrow measure of one part of a larger play. Franklin and Sainristil reached the same figure, but the available numbers don’t establish that their assignments or opportunities were identical. A tie at the top, with few qualifying players near the mark.

Denver’s blockers set the pace

The Broncos had the two highest grades among qualifying kick return unit players: JL Skinner earned a 90.3, with Nate Adkins close behind at 90.1. Las Vegas’ Cody Lindenberg ranked third at 88.4. Just these three players cleared a 75.0 grade while playing at least five snaps on a kick return unit. That makes the top of the ranking clear, while also showing how selective the cutoff is: the list doesn’t suggest that every Denver return blocker performed at that level, or that a grade alone captures the quality of a full return unit.

Kick return blocking is often most visible when something goes wrong: a missed assignment can close a lane before the returner has room to build speed. When it works, the blockers’ contribution can be harder to separate from the runner’s. Laube’s long score provides a direct illustration of that relationship, though the play description identifies the Raiders’ own blockers and doesn’t connect it to Denver’s grades. If you’re working in this space, the distinction matters: the headline return and the weekly unit rankings illuminate related parts of special teams, but they’re not evidence of the same team’s performance.

Kick coverage had four players at 80.0 or better among those who logged at least five snaps. Behind Elarms-Orr, Dallas’ Juanyeh Thomas earned an 81.2, Kansas City’s Jeffrey Bassa an 80.4, and Chicago’s Daniel Hardy an 80.0. The group is tightly packed compared with the gap between the leading return unit grades and the 75.0 threshold. That said, these figures describe the listed qualifying players; they don’t tell us how often each player faced a particular return scheme or how the rest of each coverage unit graded.

Reliable snaps, limited gunner wins

Five long snappers finished above an 80.0 grade. Ferguson led at 82.8, followed by New England’s Julian Ashby at 82.2, the Los Angeles Chargers’ Josh Harris at 82.1, Pittsburgh’s Christian Kuntz at 81.2, and Philadelphia’s Rocco Underwood at 81.0. Each recorded a punt coverage tackle without a missed tackle, and none had an inaccurate snap. That combination offers a useful picture of clean work in the numbers provided: the snap was accurate, and each player also made a tackle without missing one. It doesn’t mean every snap or coverage assignment was identical, but there were no listed errors in those categories.

Gunner wins were scarce: only two players recorded multiple rep wins at the position. Arizona’s Kitan Crawford was the only gunner to combine multiple wins with multiple tackles. That scarcity makes the distinction between a single standout play and repeated success especially relevant. The figures don’t show every detail of each matchup, but they suggest that multiple wins were uncommon in this week’s sample. Here's the thing: the quieter jobs can have a measurable footprint even when they don’t produce a score.

What the Week 8 numbers show

The week’s returns and grades underline how often special teams outcomes hinge on individual blocks and clean execution across less visible roles. Laube’s touchdown is the clearest example of a return that had the space to become a score, while the grades show separate players standing out in coverage, snapping, and return blocking. The numbers are useful for identifying those performances, but they’re a snapshot rather than a full account of how every unit operated. They point to where execution was strong and where a particular skill showed up in the results.

And yet, a standout grade or return can’t tell the whole story on its own. The most useful reading is to connect the individual marks to the assignment they measure, then keep the limits of the sample in view. Buffalo’s specialists led in several listed roles; Denver’s qualifying return blockers occupied the top two spots; and gunner wins were limited. Taken together, that’s a week in which the less visible work deserves attention alongside the touchdown. What this means for you as a reader: look past the returner when judging a return, and check which blockers and specialists helped create the play.