Marcus Mariota raised a few eyebrows when he signed a two-year, $17.6 million deal with the Raiders in the offseason.
Naturally, the storylines that followed stirred up the idea of a quarterback controversy in Las Vegas, but reports from training camp have reaffirmed that Derek Carr is still firmly entrenched as Jon Gruden’s starter.
Gruden has been complementary of Mariota’s camp to this point and this week he detailed some of the challenges Mariota has been facing as he works toward getting healthy and performing in a new offense.
“He’s reinventing himself right now,” Gruden told SiriusXM NFL’s Jim Miller and Pat Kirwan. “He had to get that ankle healthy. He had to get the shoulder healthy. We’re changing a few of his fundamentals just to try to get him in rhythm with our offense and so far he’s been impressive.”
One thing Gruden didn’t mention was how complicated his playbook and verbiage can be to learn for a quarterback. It isn’t something that will happen for Mariota overnight. Everyone remembers the ancient clip of Chris Simms trying to call a play for Gruden in Tampa and how much trouble he had just repeating the play in the huddle. It will take time for Mariota as well.
With that in mind, Simms recently gave a short tutorial on Gruden’s verbiage on offense.
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But we don’t want to leave you with Simms looking like the smartest guy in the room. So let’s close out the article with this…
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Furthermore… Baker Mayfield is not a better quarterback than Carr.
twitter: @raidersbeat
(photo credit: raiders.com)
I’m a huge Mariota fan (GO DUCKS!), and my man is a Raiders fan, so we’re watching this development with a lot of interest. I believe in you, Marcus. You got this!!