Silver And Black Pride
Deciding who will be the starting quarterback will be chief among the goals for Las Vegas
With eight players on injured reserve — four of which were either starters or game-day contributors — and an injury report that grew by the week, head coach Antonio Pierce knew his Las Vegas Raiders were in dire need of a reprieve during the bye week.
“I don’t think we’ll practice at all this week to be honest with you,” Pierce said during his Monday press conference to begin this week. “We’ll meet, we’ll have some self scout moments. We’ll have some time to reflect and talk, and at that point take a deep breath, reset, reset as a staff, reset as a team, and then get back together probably more than likely on Monday and Tuesday.”
The reset is required as Las Vegas entered the hiatus on a five-game losing skid and a 2-7 overall record. The Silver & Black are in the bottom tier on both offense and defense ranking 26th amongst the 32 teams in points scored (168 total, 18.7 average per game) and 29th in points allowed (251 total, 27.9 per game average).
There’s plenty for the Raiders to do and the question of it is it truly wise for Pierce to not have his team practice during the bye week with a new offensive coordinator (Scott Turner) and new offensive line coach (Joe Philbin) in place? — a valid and wise one. But here we are.
And as we enter a three-day holiday weekend, Las Vegas is slated to ramp up it’s Week 11 prep — a trip to the Miami Dolphins — the coming new week. Thus, let’s take a look at what the Raiders need to accomplish:
This will be both Pierce’s and Turner’s top priority. Do the Raiders trot out the well-compensated Gardner Minshew II for his eighth start of the year or do they roll with Desmond Ridder?
Minshew — who inked a two-year, $25-million contract with Las Vegas this past offseason — was benched yet again this season during the team’s 41-24 walloping at the hands of the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 9. He expressed frustration about getting yanked in favor of Ridder, but it’s difficult to ignore Minshew’s proneness to give the ball up. He’s thrown eight interceptions on the year (which ties him for third most in the league) and fumbled five times on the year (he has one in each of the last three games). Minshew did perform well int he 27-20 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 8 (24 of 30 for an 80-percent completion rate, for 209 yards and two touchdowns) but was ineffective the following week in Cincinnati.
Ridder, on the other hand, went 11 of 16 for 74 yards and a...
