After months of offseason practices, training camp practices, and now one preseason game, we could be days away from the Raiders *finally* naming a starting quarterback.
We have been watching both quarterbacks perform throughout the offseason and training camp, and didn’t come away from that thinking either quarterback had separated himself from the other. That has been Antonio Pierce’s evaluation as well, it would seem.
Saturday’s preseason opener, it was Aidan O’Connell who got the start, but only because one of them had to be the starter. And both quarterbacks played fairly well.
“I thought both guys were efficient,” Pierce said in his Sunday morning press conference. “There were some opportunities that Minshew made down the field that were really good. But I thought both quarterbacks…obviously when it’s a clean pocket you can see what this offense can be with both guys. But I thought they really did a good job with operations. We did have one delay of game with Gardner that we need to clean up. But I thought Aidan did a really good job when being backed up into the red zone and Gardner in the two-minute drill. Everything that we wanted to get out of preseason [Week] one, we got.”
Pierce wouldn’t say who would be taking the field first in next Saturday’s preseason game against the Cowboys, but that after that game, he hopes to have his decision on who will be the team’s opening day starter.
“The goal will be to hopefully make a decision after this game this Saturday,” Pierce said. “We got to get ready to play football and I think we got enough film. We’ll have two games to evaluate both quarterbacks to see how they’ll play.”
So, this time next week, we could have our answer on who will start versus the Chargers in the season opener on September 8 in Los Angeles.