With the preseason Week 2 game in the books, Las Vegas Raiders head coach Antonio Pierce has confirmed he's ready to make a decision at quarterback between Aidan O'Connell and Gardner Minshew.
However, it's not an easy decision, and not because both quarterbacks lit the world on fire. Instead, Minshew and O'Connell both failed to truly stand out more than the other, which pretty much continued on Saturday night.
Yes, O'Connell had the better showing overall, but just when it looked like he had finally locked-up the starting job over Minshew, who looked worse than the week prior, O'Connell tossed a bad pick-six on his last throw in what was a microcosm of this competition: one step forward, two steps back.
"It sucks," O'Connell said of his pick, according to ESPN's Paul Gutierrez . "It sucks to throw interceptions in general, but to be the last play is definitely tough. That one will linger, but it's football. You're going to learn from it, move on, and I'm not going to make that mistake again."
After the game, Pierce clearly wasn't thrilled with what the signal-callers put on tape in preseason Week 2, and throughout the offseason in general.
"I think everybody wants to see a player just take it and say, 'Hey, I'm your guy,'" Pierce said. "Obviously, probably not the case, so we're going to have to make a decision and we're going to live with it and we're going to support whoever that quarterback is for the Raiders going forward."
Now, Pierce will try to take all the information he has dating all the way back to OTAs and is going to consult offensive coordinator Luke Getsy and general manager Tom Telesco before making a decision.
"I'm going to go all the way back to OTAs, minicamp, training camp, two preseason games," he said. "And there's going to be a lot of factors, obviously, right? Command of the offense, the operational part, efficiency. The turnovers is huge -- that shows up -- taking care of the football's going to be important for our team.
"And then ... sitting there with Telesco and Luke over the next couple of days and just really pinpointing who's going to get us off to a fast start to get to where we want to be in that first quarter of the season."
The problem with all that information is, by all accounts, it shows a 50/50 split, so more is going to have to be taken into consideration.
With all things being mostly equal, the Raiders might as well see what they have in the younger O'Connell, who at least has a shot to be a long-term solution as he enters his second season.
But truth be told, after everything we've seen, no decision the Raiders make will be surprising.
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