Photo credit: Rich Corral, Vegas Sports Today
A week after dropping its preseason opener in Minnesota to the Vikings, the Raiders will take the field at Allegiant Stadium for its first game action in the 2024 season this Saturday.
The Silver and Black will welcome the Dallas Cowboys for both teams’ second of three preseason games.
Throughout training camp, the competition for starting quarterback between Gardner Minshew and Aidan O’Connell has been neck-in-neck.
In the game against the Vikings, O’Connell started and played one drive. He completed seven of his nine passes for 76 yards.
On the third drive of the game, Minshew came in to finish the first half and completed half of his passes for 117 yards and a touchdown.
Following the game this upcoming Saturday, head coach Antonio Pierce hopes that he will be able to name the starting quarterback for week one.
“The goal would be to hopefully make a decision after this game this Saturday. We got to get ready to play football. We got enough film and we’ll have two games here to evaluate both quarterbacks to see how they’ll play,” Pierce said.
The third option at quarterback for the Raiders this week will look different as the team signed Nathan Peterman and released Anthony Brown on Thursday.
Defensive Consistency
Coming into this season, multiple media outlets named the Raiders defense as one of the best in the NFL. Through the first half of its game against the Vikings, that unit looked to live up to the hype.
The team only gave up seven points in the first half in Minnesota and forced a turnover off of a Jack Jones interception. The story changed in the second half, however.
With a 20-7 lead at halftime, Minnesota came out and scored two touchdowns on back-to-back drives to take the lead. The Raiders were never able to regain the lead and ultimately fell 24-23.
To pull out the win this week, the Raiders’ third and fourth-string players who play in the second half will need to step up their games.
Missing Cowboys
The Raiders will get lucky this week as the team will miss out on facing two of Dallas’ biggest offensive weapons.
Starting quarterback Dak Prescott is unlikely to take any snaps as he recently returned to practice this week following a contract dispute. Backup and former top-five pick Trey Lance will most likely start in place.
In its preseason opener against the Rams, Lance played a majority of the game throwing for 188 yards on 60% passing.
The Cowboys will also be without star receiver CeeDee Lamb who has not participated in training camp due to contract negotiations as well.
Jalen Brooks will get a lot of looks in the absence of Lamb as he led the team in receiving yards last week with 49.
The Cowboys and Raiders will kick off at 7 p.m. Saturday.
