The Las Vegas Raiders don't know who their Week 1 quarterback will be, and no one is on the same page about this.
One of the most entertaining aspects of following the Las Vegas Raiders is the seemingly endless capacity for mixed messaging from top people who should know better. GM John Spytek provided the latest example of this as he continues to insist that quarterback Fernando Mendoza could be under center in Week 1, assuming the Raiders draft him next week.
“Ultimately, this is a meritocracy, and the best guy will play,” Spytek said in a piece written by Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk. “It’s just really hard to play really well at a young age, but we’ve seen plenty of quarterbacks do it recently. And how that goes going forward here, we added Kirk [Cousins], we have Aidan [O'Connell], and we’ll see how it goes. But the best man will play.”
Presumably Spyted is aware of how ridiculous this sounds, especially given that coach Klint Kubiak has already said he’s not thrilled about the idea of having a rookie quarterback start right out of the gate.
But Spytek has a different set of interests in making these remarks. His dog in this “fight” is getting young players on the field so he can keep his job and showing that his drafts aren’t as bad as last year’s looks right now.
“We all want to see the young guys play, we want to see them play well, but we don’t want to put anybody out there, regardless of the position, who’s not ready,” Spytek added.
The quarterback who knows the most about this is minority owner Tom Brady, who sat for several seasons with the New England Patriots as he made his way up the depth chart. Brady’s quotes these days are an almost indecipherable word salad, though, so we won’t go there.
That leaves it to Spytek to discuss the details of playing the position, which makes it even more obvious that newly-signed Kirk Cousins will be under center and lining up in shotgun when the season opens.
“It’s a hard position to play, and there’s a lot to learn beyond throwing the football and being a good teammate,” Spytek said. “A lot of these guys, they live their entire life in shotgun. They don’t huddle. So you really got to teach some of these guys how to run a huddle, how to break a huddle, how to get under center and call a cadence because you see so many of them clap now, too.
“It’s far beyond learning a playbook, which in and of itself is hard enough. When you can be patient — and we all understand there’s not a ton of patience in the job that we chose here — but if you can find some level of patience and put people in positions when they’re ready, that’s the best way forward.”
Make of all this what you will, but the truth is that no one knows what any of this might look like until we see Mendoza on the field in training camp. That will provide some indicators, but until that happens we’ll have be content with the Raiders’ usual mixed messaging.