New Las Vegas Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels is known to be one of the most creative offensive minds throughout the league and is great with quarterbacks. As far as the Raiders go, however, one of the biggest questions remaining is the future of the quarterback position.
Though he is entering the last year of his contract, Derek Carr remains the starter and has yet to agree to an extension with the Raiders. Discussions are ongoing, but the two sides have yet to find that ‘sweet spot’ that McDaniels has talked about.
After Carr, however, the only other quarterback on the roster is Garrett Gilbert, who has thrown for just 477 yards and one touchdown in eight appearances in his career. McDaniels all but confirmed that the team will be adding another quarterback, likely through the draft, and discussed his desire to be able to develop quarterbacks in his system, via Vincent Bonsignore of the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
“At the end of the day what we’d like to do is get in a cycle where we find people that we bring in and can train. And we can develop,” McDaniels said. “A great thing for a quarterback is to have time in a system, continued development year after year. Not bring him in for one year, then sit there and say, alright, now I’ve got to it again. That’s a pain in the butt sometimes.”
McDaniels makes a solid point about how difficult it can be for a quarterback to develop when they are constantly switching systems. Having years in the same system makes things so much easier and for a coach to have a backup he can trust behind his starter who knows how to thrive in a system is a great luxury.
The Raiders head coach has said many times that Carr is the team’s quarterback, but McDaniels wants everyone in his quarterback room to be trustworthy, and that is more likely to happen the longer they are within his system. One thing that seems to be for certain is that an addition will be made at the position when the draft rolls around.
