On Tuesday, The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Vinny Bonsignore suggested the Raiders had a “card up their sleeve” with their decision to put Aidan O’Connell on the 53-man roster despite the expectation that he is going to miss 6 to 8 weeks with a wrist injury.
With O’Connell injured for up to two months, it didn’t make sense right away to see him take a roster spot that could have gone to a player they could potentially lose after roster cuts.
But on Wednesday, Bonsignore circled back and explained what the Raiders were doing with AOC.
“I know everyone was asking, if [O’Connell is] hurt why did he take somebody’s roster spot on the 53-man roster? Why didn’t you just put him on IR or why didn’t you just waive him?” Bonsignore said on the Vegas Nation First and 10 podcast.
“Number one, had they put him on IR before the 53-man roster was set, there was two ways to be able to do that. One, was to use one of their two moves that you can make on injured players at that point and put them on IR with the ability to bring them back at some point this season before you set your 53-man roster,” Bonsignore continued.
“Those two though, take away from your eight total. So, they already put Lonnie Johnson on IR yesterday, which means putting Aidan O’Connell on IR with the ability to bring him back at some point before your 53-man roster was set, would have then left them with only six of those types of moves down the road.”
“So you want to preserve as many of those eight spots, now seven with Lonnie being out of the… having already taken one of those spots. You want to preserve as many of those seven spots as possible. So, from the Raiders’ perspective, they’re saying, ‘OK, let’s wait until the whole process, set the 53-man roster, make the moves that we want to make in terms of the waivers, adding players, all of that, and then put Aidan O’Connell on the IR.’ Because at that point, once your 53-man roster is set, you don’t have to designate a return… so you want to maintain the flexibility because they don’t know if they’re going to need Aidan O’Connell right now.”
In simpler terms, it sounds like the Raiders didn’t want to commit this early to one of their eight designation-to-return injured reserve spots on O’Connell, so they put him on the 53-man roster.
As far as losing players after roster cuts, Sincere McCormick was the only player the Raiders lost and considering their running back room is arguably the deepest position group on the team, McCormick shouldn’t be a consequential loss.
x: @raidersbeat