The Las Vegas Raiders will take a big step in the process of determining who their starting quarterback will be between Gardner Minshew and Aidan O'Connell when the team takes the field for preseason Week 1 on Saturday night.
While it remains to be seen which signal-caller will take the field first against the Minnesota Vikings, head coach Antonio Pierce has said the team will play each quarterback for a quarter.
But Pierce added it doesn't matter who goes out first or second because whoever takes the field second this week will be the first one out next week.
"We've still got two more true training camp practices, then we've got Wednesday, Thursday, and then that's when we'll start looking at what we want to do game-wise," Pierce said Monday. "Like I said, both quarterbacks are gonna play a legit quarter. Who goes out first and who goes out second really doesn't matter. [They will] get hopefully an equal amount of snaps and opportunity to showcase."
#Raiders coach Antonio Pierce tells me he has not yet decided who will start at QB at the #Vikings, but said earlier both Minshew & O'Connell will play a quarter each. I asked if it mattered who started, and Pierce said not really, because the other QB would start the next week.
— Paul Gutierrez (@PGutierrezESPN) August 7, 2024
Pierce said he wasn't putting too much stock into the respective showings from the quarterbacks in practice, which has been lackluster all offseason. Instead, he's putting more weight behind how they look in real game action during the preseason.
"I wasn't going to base everything off practice... A lot of different factors play into it," Pierce said. "Defensive play. Who's going with the ones? Who's going with the twos? This preseason game will be very telling. I want to see these guys take care of the ball, manage the team, take care of situational football."
By all accounts, Minshew has outperformed O'Connell in practice more times than the other way around, but there has never been huge separation between the two and both have been disappointing. We'll see if that changes on Saturday night.
