The Raiders have a QB. The Raiders have a good QB! The Raiders have a good QB who is not Gardner Minshew. Considering what Raiders fans had to spend all season watching last year, those three facts are all you really need to know.
BUT. What if we wanted to rehash a very old story about a QB who's not on the Raiders, has never been on the Raiders, and never will be on the Raiders? That'd be fun, right? No? Oh. Well, we're doing it anyway! Content is king here, not happiness.
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Matt Stafford turned down a TON of Raiders money to stay with the Rams
"[Stafford's] new deal gives him a nice bump over what he was making, for sure, and is the sort of contract adjustment teams only give to players they value at the highest level. That said, the New York Giants and Las Vegas Raiders were willing to go a lot further, into the area where the average on a new contract would start with a five ... With the Raiders and Giants willing to exceed $100 million over the next two years, he walked away from around $20 million stay in California. You can say, Well, look how much he’s made already! But $20 million is $20 million. And so that makes this a little like the final deals that Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and Tom Brady signed—where those guys took a little less to stay put."
I mean, that's nice for Stafford and all, but who cares? I don't think it's a secret that the Raiders kicked the tires on a Stafford trade during the time when like, half the league was also doing the same thing. It didn't work out, and that's life. Woulda been cool though! Fortunately, the Raiders landed a younger, equally-cool (and way less expensive) QB. And again – it's not Gardner Minshew. Minshew's gone for good. That's maybe the most important lesson from this blog – if not landing Stafford was some weird butterfly effect of cutting bait with Minshew, I can live with that.
Now they can back up the Brinks truck for someone else! Or maybe just keep the Brinks truck in the shop and wait until they really need it. Or maybe stop storing all their money in Brinks trucks?