The second preseason game did not go as Antonio Pierce and the Raiders had hoped. The first preseason game saw the two quarterbacks — Aidan O’Connell and Gardner Minshew — battling for the starting job both show flashes. Minshew won the day in terms of his play, however he was going against reserves while O’Connell faced starters.
That wasn’t the case for either quarterback Saturday night against Dallas. Neither QB went against a first team offense and neither QB played particularly well.
Minshew couldn’t lead the team for a touchdown despite five drives, one off of a turnover on a fumbled return. And O’Connell followed up the first touchdown drive of the game with an interception returned for a TD. Pierce said O’Connell’s one scoring drive will not outweigh his crucial mistake on the pick six.
“Everything [counts]. You can’t take the good and not take the bad,” Pierce said. “We’ll look at it and evaluate. They both had opportunities. Aidan had 20 attempts and Minshew had 21. So, that’s as balanced as you can get it and we’ll look at it. Obviously our plan was tonight to throw the ball around and let these guys showcase what they can do and we’ll talk about it.”
Pierce was hoping by this point one or the other of the two QBs would have stepped up and said “I’m the guy.” He literally said that’s what he was waiting to see. That never happened. Not Saturday or really at any point before that.
Even still, a decision has to be made, and Pierce says he’s seen enough to go into that process.
“Yeah, we’ve seen enough reps,” Antonio Pierce said of the Raiders QB competition. . . “We’ll sleep on it and make a decision in the next couple days.”
Pierce said he’s going to be factoring in everything going back as far as OTA’s all the way through camp and the preseason when making his decision. But, let’s be honest, had either guy separated himself in recent weeks, nothing that happened before that would have mattered.
These two didn’t make the decision an easy one. And had they both played great, that would be a good problem to have. In this case, it’s just a problem. But the Raiders have no choice. They need to decide now and start preparing for the season with whoever they choose running the first team in every practice.
Expect that to be the case when they reconvene for their next practice in a couple days.
