Just when it seemed we had a grip on who was leading the Las Vegas Raiders\u2019 quarterback competition between Gardner Minshew and Aidan O\u2019Connell, the pendulum swung yet again on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
During Tuesday\u2019s opening practice of mandatory minicamp, Minshew snagged more first-team reps, suggesting he was the frontrunner for the starting role. However, as we cautioned, the significance of first-team rep distribution depends on the Raiders\u2019 consistency in their approach.<\/p>\n
Enter Tashan Reed of The Athletic with a plot twist: O\u2019Connell took the lion\u2019s share of first-team reps on Wednesday, swinging the competition back in his favor.<\/p>\n
Despite this seesaw of practice reps, both quarterbacks continue to struggle. Reed highlighted that neither O\u2019Connell nor Minshew has shined during OTAs. They\u2019ve had trouble pushing the ball downfield, have thrown too many off-target passes, and their timing remains off. It\u2019s early days yet, but both have a long road ahead.<\/p>\n
Adding to the critique, ESPN\u2019s Paul Gutierrez reported that O\u2019Connell threw two interceptions on Wednesday, while Minshew added another to his tally.<\/p>\n
The fact that neither quarterback has found much success this offseason is concerning. However, it\u2019s worth noting they are both adapting to a new system and facing a formidable defense, so struggles are somewhat expected.<\/p>\n
While this doesn\u2019t entirely alleviate the worries about the Raiders\u2019 quarterback situation, it should keep fans from hitting the panic button\u2014at least for now.<\/p>\n
With one more minicamp practice on Thursday, Minshew and O\u2019Connell will then look forward to training camp in late July. That\u2019s when the competition will really intensify as the pads come on. We\u2019ll have a much clearer picture then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just when it seemed we had a grip on who was leading the Las Vegas Raiders\u2019 quarterback competition between Gardner\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":23811,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3428],"class_list":["post-673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other-sports","tag-las-vegas-raiders"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}