O'Connell Earned the Right to Compete For Starting Spot

The Las Vegas Raiders will more than likely look to bring in an additional quarterback. Aidan O'Connell has earned the right to compete for the starting job.

The Las Vegas Raiders entered this season with a new, veteran quarterback in Jimmy Garoppolo, who was brought in as essentially a bridge player to help the team move on from Derek Carr and stabilize the position until the Raiders found their quarterback of the future. 

Veteran quarterback Brian Hoyer was brought in to back up Garoppolo, and Aidan O'Connell was drafted in the fourth round of last year's NFL Draft to back up both quarterbacks on the depth chart. 

Seventeen games, a new offensive coordinator, and a new head coach later, O'Connell was the last quarterback of the three. He performed admirably in his first nine starts as the team's primary quarterback. 

O'Connell was expectedly thrown into the starting quarterback position in the middle of the season, the same week the only head coach and offensive coordinator he had played with since being drafted were fired. 

The rookie quarterback took over a sputtering offense with a first-time NFL play-caller in Bo Hardegree and a first-time NFL head coach in Antonio Pierce and went 5-4 down the stretch.

O'Connell experienced the highs and the lows most rookie players, especially quarterbacks, experience. He finished the Raiders' first game against the Chiefs with the highest quarterback rating of all quarterbacks in the league. A few weeks later, the Raiders beat the Kansas City Chiefs on the road without O'Connell completing a single pass after the first quarter. 

While O'Connell struggled at times this season, he played equally well and generally had more good games than bad ones. The job O'Connell did this season wasn't always easy to watch, but he got the job done five times out of nine and, with a little better luck, could have finished with even more wins than that. 

Maybe more importantly, there weren't many games, if any at all, that O'Connell singlehandedly lost for Las Vegas. Considering how their first eight games of the season went, that was an upgrade for Las Vegas' starting quarterback position. 

While the Raiders will bring in another offensive coordinator and, more than likely, another quarterback, O'Connell did enough this season to show he has the potential to be a starting quarterback moving forward. 

With over half of a season's worth of professional starts now under his belt and a full offseason's worth of valuable development, O'Connell has earned the right to at least have a fair, legitimate shot at competing for the starting quarterback position next season. 

From February 27 to March 4, 2024, the NFL Scouting Combine will be held at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Ind.

The NFL Draft will be held in Detroit, Mich., on April 25-27, 2024. The Las Vegas Raiders currently hold the No. 13 overall pick.

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