The Raiders have a starting quarterback!
In case you were out this weekend and not entirely tuned into NFL Network at 9PM on a Saturday night, you missed the second Raiders preseason game. Really! It happened. The Raiders even managed to score 12 points, which is a lot of points for most sports.
But far and away the most important development from Saturday night's game happened after the Raiders scored all 12 of their points: the team announced that Gardner Minshew would be the starting QB for the regular season. After a wildly underwhelming month of camp competition reports, the team is indeed going with the quarterback they just paid almost $20 million this offseason. The Aidan O'Connell hive doesn't need to get too upset, though – your time is almost certainly coming in, like, a month.
Pierce doesn't rule out starting Aidan O'Connell at some point this year
When Pierce was asked about the two QBs ($$), his response was about as predicatable as coachspeak gets, and also a wonderfully dark reminder of what watching Raiders QBs is going to be like this season.
"In the National Football League, you never know. But Aidan is a younger player that has tremendous upside. I think he’ll still be a starter at some point in this league, whether it’s this year or next year. He will play in games."
I get that "he will play in games" is basically just Pierce reassuring O'Connell through the media, but boy does that hit in a different way for Raiders fans. Imagine the biggest fan you know just staring off 1000 yards into the distance, repeating "he will play in games" over and over again with increasing amounts of panic. HE WILL START IN GAMES.
And now after a summer of guessing which quarterback will start Week 1, we get to pivot into a fall of guessing who's going to start Week 6. It's a whole different game! With the same bleak stakes!