It’s been a slow process in the competition for the starting quarterback job for the Raiders. That process continues and it doesn’t look like the team is any closer to getting an idea of who will show themselves to be a the guy than they were a couple months ago.
Incumbent starter Aidan O’Connell has continued to take most of the first team reps. Veteran challenger Gardner Minshew has taken some snaps with the first team, but mostly he runs with the second team. But that doesn’t mean that’s where things will stay.
For O’Connell to cement himself as the number one guy, he would have to show a lot more than he has. And for Minshew to surpass him, he has to do more as well.
“I’d like to see…somebody to take it and say ‘I’m the guy, AP,” head coach Antonio Pierce said of the QB competition prior to Tuesday’s practice. “And make it clear, and evident and we’ll make that decision at that point.”
Pierce went on to say that what he is looking for is “somebody has to separate from the other.”
With that as his criteria, it didn’t appear as if either QB did that on the first day in pads. O’Connell had one good deep ball to Jakobi Meyers on a corner route and might have had a good pass on a go route to Davante had he not been interfered with. While Minshew had a few nice mid-range passes over the middle to Brock Bowers, Kristian Fulton, and DJ Turner.
Neither of them were able to get anything going consistently. Outside of those two passes, O’Connell was way off with his throws and Minshew may have gotten things going on one drive late in practice, but it was second team vs second team. And we didn’t see much of that in practice leading up to it.
We are approaching the halfway point of camp in terms of actual practices. There are 11 on-field practices in total in Costa Mesa. Though pads just went on today for the first time and so the final six practices will have ramped up intensity.
A lot is made of the first day in pads, and rightfully so. While the coaches would probably like the QB competition to be settled by now, there is still six more padded camp practices and then a few more weeks of practices back in Vegas to figure it out.
What you hope to see very soon, however, is some semblance of one of the guys putting things together and making a statement with his play that he can be the guy. So long as neither has done that, even for a single practice, it’s a bit concerning.