The Raiders have not named Kirk Cousins as the starting quarterback, but the overwhelming expectation is that Cousins will be the starting quarterback when the Raiders face the Dolphins in week 1.
Cousins has earned the trust of head coach Klint Kubiak going back to their time together in Minnesota, and it’s going to be interesting to see what the 2026 version of their offense will look like together.
On Tuesday, Jesse Merrick was a guest on Raider Nation Radio’s Morning Tailgate, and he talked about what he thinks the offense will look like with Cousins as the helm.
“Ryan Hoag and I have been saying on my shows a lot that we think it’s going to be death by a thousand paper cuts,” Merrick said of the Raiders’ offense under Kubiak.
“I think that’s what Kirk Cousins can do,” Merrick continued. “This is a guy that wants everybody to be on the same page, is a stickler of like, ‘Hey, you go to this spot, and the ball is going to be there’ in terms of his receivers and the guys that he’s throwing to. He wants to be on point with all of those things, and I think that efficiency shows in his play. I think we saw that throughout training camp; where’s he’s just kind of moving the chains. It’s the dinks and the dunks and then every now and again he’ll take a shot in the intermediate area of the field…”
“I think I’ve seen some folks out there like, ‘Oh, he can’t throw deep or he’s not throwing it way down the field.’ That’s not really what they’re going to ask him to do in this offense. When they take their shots, it’s going to be over the middle of the field. He’s not going to be out there air raiding, slinging it around the yard.”
Merrick added that the Raiders will try to lean on the running game and hope Cousins can manage the offense for Kubiak the way Sam Darnold did a year ago.
As for the running game, it has become evident in the last few weeks that Kubiak has a second running back in Mike Washington Jr. who is capable of making plays when Ashton Jeanty isn’t on the field.
Raiders GM John Spytek seemed optimist on Jeanty’s ankle injury when he spoke to the media on Monday, and the consensus seems to be that there’s a good chance Jeanty will be in the lineup on opening day.
x: @raidersbeat