Marcus Mariota Has To Play

Sports Illustrated Raider Maven writer Hikaru Kudo gives his opinion on why he believes Marcus Mariota needs to play for the Raiders

Why aren’t the Las Vegas Raiders playing backup quarterback Marcus Mariota?

I’m not saying that Mariota is suddenly going to start games for Derek Carr.  I am not even hinting at that.  

That’s not it at all.

But, the New Orleans Saints understand that you can have packages for athletic playmaking backups and so should the Raiders.

It was made quite obvious against the Los Angeles Chargers a couple of weeks ago that the run-pass option with Mariota under center was effective.

Head coach Jon Gruden himself pointed out the positives and negatives yesterday.

“Well the pros and cons are pretty obvious,” Gruden said. “You can keep the defense off-balance if that’s what you think. I think when we put Marcus in at quarterback, most coaches are pretty sharp. I think they’ll know plays can be different. He’s not the only dual-threat quarterback playing in the NFL.

"I think it might apply a different defense. You might see some different looks. There’s a lot of things obviously, but those are the two main things.”

There’s a loss of the two-quarterback system in the NFL nowadays and for whatever reason, coaches think they have to stick with one “star quarterback."

But ultimately, if the Raiders organization wants to bring a Super Bowl victory to Raider Nation, they have to start doing things differently.

I mean just look at the history of the organization itself. Al Davis brought the mentality of “Just Win Baby!”

Davis was one of the leaders when it came to introducing black players to the game of football. He brought in Art Shell during the 1968 draft and Shell later had two coaching stints with the Raiders and became a Hall-of-Famer.

They are an innovative franchise. For crying out loud, they just moved to Las Vegas this past off-season.

They host training camp in Napa.

So why not be innovators of the league once again and bring back a true two-quarterback system?

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