The Raiders cut offensive lineman Evan Neal from their practice squad on Monday, the team announced.
The Giants released Neal out of the preseason, and the Raiders signed him soon after.
Neal was not active for any games with the Raiders, and he has not played in a game since 2024.
The Giants selected him seventh overall in the 2022 draft, and he began his career at right tackle. The Giants moved him to right guard, and he did not play a snap there last season.
He ended his Giants career with 29 games played, including 27 starts.
The Raiders also cut tight end Chris Myarick from their practice squad. The team had activated Myarick for two games this season, and he played eight snaps on offense and three on special teams.
In corresponding moves, the Raiders signed offensive tackles Amari Kight and Darian Kinnard to the practice squad.
Kight, 25, played for Raiders coach Klint Kubiak last season when Kubiak was the offensive coordinator for the Seahawks. He appeared in four games for Seattle in 2025, but Seattle waived him during the preseason with an undisclosed injury.
Kinnard entered the league as a fifth-round pick of the Chiefs in 2022. The journeyman was with the Packers last season and appeared in every game, starting four.
The ejection of Bills safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson for spitting on an opponent raises an interesting question, as it relates to the additional discipline to be imposed by the league office.
Last year, the NFL adopted a new approach to spitting. It now results in a one-game suspension, sort of.
It started when Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter spit on Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott before the first play from scrimmage in the regular-season opener. Because Carter’s ejection covered the entire game, his punishment — a fine in the amount of a game check — simulated a suspension.
Later in the season, Bengals receiver Ja’Marr Chase spit on Steelers defensive back Jalen Ramsey. The officials didn’t see it, so Chase wasn’t ejected. Instead, he was suspended for the next game.
For Gardner-Johnson, the ejection caused him to miss half of the Week 6 game against the Raiders. Will he be suspended for another full game? Will the league fashion an NCAA-style targeting punishment that keeps him out for the first half of the Bills’ next game?
Because Buffalo has a Week 7 bye, the clock isn’t ticking as loudly as it ordinarily would be. Still, the league has a decision to make given the new precedent that was set in 2025, when the punishment for spitting morphed from a fine into a suspension. And Gardner-Johnson presents the first example of a player who missed roughly half of a game after being ejected.
During Sunday’s game against the Raiders in Las Vegas, Bills safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson was ejected for spitting on an opponent. He addressed the situation after the game victory, without denying any of it.
“I’ve got to be a better player, I’ve got to be a better vet,” Gardner-Johnson said. “I let my emotions get above me, and I hurt my team. They brought me here to play in big games like this. So I’ve got to do better and control my emotions, nothing crazy.”
Asked specifically whether he spit on an opponent, Gardner-Johnson glossed over the question.
“I’ve got to control my emotions,” Gardner-Johnson said. “It was nothing towards competitive. We just — like I said, heat of the moment. Everybody saw what was going on. It wasn’t nothing egregious against nobody. Like I said, we was just competing in the game. A call was made, a flag was made. We went to chirping. And I guess, you know, just being competitive, like I say, nothing towards [Raiders tight end] Brock [Bowers] and nothing towards the team. Like I said, we was chirping, going back and forth. I’ve got to be better and keep pushing.”
How did he process being required to leave before halftime?
“You’ve got to take it on the chin like a grown man, and understand that you can’t be doing shit like that in a game,” Gardner-Johnson said. “No matter how passionate I am, I just can’t be doing shit like that in the game. I cost my team. A player to go down, which is me, as a vet. I’ll be better. I’ll take my consequence as it is. A fine, whatever it may be.”
Gardner-Johnson also said he spoke to coach Joe Brady and apologized to the team. He also acknowledged that his “gesture isn’t warranted.”
For his part, Brady said, “The discipline of our football team has to improve. And that sure as hell can’t happen. The team is bigger than that. The situation is bigger than that. Everything is bigger. And it can’t happen. And it definitely has to be addressed.”
Again, Gardner-Johnson didn’t specifically admit to doing it. Given the context, combined with his comments and his failure to deny doing it, it’s clear that he knows he did it.
The next question is whether he’ll get a suspension to go along with an ejection that resulted in Gardner-Johnson missing half of Sunday’s game.
Bills safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson was ejected late in the first half of Sunday’s game against the Raiders. It appeared that Gardner-Johnson was ejected for spitting.
After the game, referee Shawn Smith explained the decision to pool reporter Case Keefer.
“We had two players jawing back and forth and then our umpire witnessed him spitting on the opponent,” Smith said.
The umpire on Smith’s crew is Tra Blake.
The video seems to show Gardner-Johnson spitting in the direction of Raiders tight end Brock Bowers, with the spit either striking Raiders center Tyler Linderbaum’s hand or Bowers’s leg.
Either way, Blake was right there to see it.
“He saw him spit on the opponent,” Smith said, regarding Blake’s account of the situation. “So, we don’t go into the judgment of where he is spitting and this, that, or the other. He spit on an opponent.”
The situation looked a lot like the incident between Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott and Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter from Week 1 of the 2025 season. After Prescott spit on the ground before the first play from scrimmage, Carter spit on Prescott.
The Raiders hung with the Bills. The game was tied 13-13 at halftime and 23-23 in the fourth quarter.
It never felt like the Bills were in danger of losing, though the Raiders never went away.
Josh Allen led Buffalo to a 33-30 win in Las Vegas as the Bills moved to 5-1. The Raiders fell to 3-3.
The Bills gained 345 yards, with 169 coming in the second half when they scored 20 points.
Allen was 23-of-33 for 255 yards and two touchdowns, including a Houdini-esque 12-yard touchdown pass to Keon Coleman on third-and-8 in the fourth quarter.
James Cook’s 3-yard touchdown run with 4:43 left was the go-ahead score, with Tyler Bass adding a 38-yard field goal with 1:56 remaining.
Bass also made kicks from 44, 28 and 47.
Coleman caught four passes for 59 yards and a touchdown, and Cook had 22 carries for 95 yards and a touchdown.
The Raiders made it interesting on Kirk Cousins’ 44-yard touchdown throw to Tre Tucker with 1:32 left.
The Raiders, though, didn’t have a prayer of recovering the onside kick, something they haven’t done since 2017 against the Chiefs. Matt Gay kicked a drop kick too far, and Khalil Shakir caught it in the air.
Cousins finished 23-of-41 for 313 yards with two touchdowns and an interception. Tucker had five catches for 97 yards and two touchdowns, and Michael Mayer added seven receptions for 95 yards.
