While this has been a standard preseason for the Oakland Raiders, it has been much more for third-year quarterback Nathan Peterman. After being cut by the Buffalo Bills last winter, Peterman found himself headed to Oakland.
Now, Peterman is on his own personal redemption tour. After throwing 12 interceptions and three touchdowns in his eight games with the Bills, things are finally turning around.
Raiders head coach Jon Gruden has been in Peterman’s corner throughout the offseason and maintained that sentiment after Thursday’s game against the Green Bay Packers when he subbed him in early in the game, via Josh Schrock of NBC Sports:
“Well we had seen enough of Glennon, to be honest,” Gruden said after the game of the snap discrepancy. ” He played very well in Arizona. I thought he did some good things tonight. I like Peterman. I’ve said that for a while now and I thought he had two touchdown passes that were dropped today, right on the money. Had a couple other balls that were dropped, right on the money. He took care of the ball. Didn’t turn it over throughout the preseason. He’s athletic.
“I like what he did tonight. Especially late in the football game.”
Peterman showed out, converting on 23 of 27 pass attempts for 210 yards and two touchdowns. His performance made him the Raiders preseason leader for touchdown passes with three.
Mike Glennon is Peterman’s main competition for the backup role behind Derek Carr. After playing a majority of the Raiders matchup with the Arizona Cardinals, Glennon took a backseat against the Packers. He only attempted nine passes and converted on four for 38 yards.
With both quarterbacks playing well, Gruden is holding out on picking one over the other:
“I’m not going to get into anything right now other than we got two pretty good quarterbacks that are competing for the No. 2 spot,” Gruden said. “We call the game differently when Mike is in there than when Nate is in there. That will be the case if we keep all three or whoever the backup is. I thought both of those guys performed well the last three games.”
Glennon has enjoyed a solid career as a backup quarterback thus far. Through five seasons and three teams, he has totaled over 5,000 passing yards and converted on 35 touchdown passes.
Although Peterman holds a slight edge in overall stats through the preseason, Glennon is right there with him. Glennon is averaging 8.6 yards per attempt to Peterman’s 5.6 and has also put up more total yards. However, Peterman has yet to throw an interception as opposed to Glennon’s two.
Gruden did not dismiss the possibility of both quarterbacks making the 53-man roster behind Carr:
“I’ve always kept three, last year was the first time we didn’t,” Gruden said. “I’m not saying we’re going to keep two or three, but we are going to try and keep the best 53 guys. We’ve got three guys who can play the position and we’ll have to make that decision here in the next week.”
After a tremendously rocky start to his career, Peterman is slowly carving out a respectable name for himself in the NFL.
