Now that the Raiders have a head coach and the coaching staff in Las Vegas has mostly been filled out, all eyes are moving the quarterback position.
More specifically, which quarterback is going to make enough of an impression on Tom Brady and the decision-makers in the Raiders building to be signed, drafted or traded for in the offseason?
Brady is the new cornerstone figure in the organization, and everyone with a microphone in Las Vegas has been adamant the seven-time Super Bowl champion is going to have a huge influence on the Raiders’ quarterback room.
But before we try to figure out which quarterback Brady likes, let’s revisit a few comments this week from Yahoo Sports insider Charles Robinson.
Robinson said he was told by someone familiar with Brady that it’s going to fascinating to see if Brady is able to successfully evaluate players that don’t have parallels to his own career.
“Okay, so I’ll give you one thing, and you process it through this microscope. One of Tom’s guys said to me, it was interesting because it was kind of, it wasn’t negative, but I think it was a fair criticism,” Robinson said on the Inside Coverage podcast.
“He said, ‘I don’t know that we know yet how Tom will evaluate quarterbacks or if he can evaluate quarterbacks.’ And I was like, ‘Really? why?’ And he said ‘Think of it this way. The way that Tom, everything Tom’s ever said publicly about quarterbacks, he gives you clues to how he evaluates them, and he evaluates them very closely to his own experience,” Robinson continued.
“[Brady wants] guys who fought their way up to their position, who have fire, who want to study hard, who stayed for four years in a program, who learned and blah, blah, blah, and stacked all this stuff up. And this guy said to me… ‘Look, when you’re a GM, one of the things that you learn or you get high up in the executive ranks or the scouting ranks, you come to think, this is how I evaluate this one player, but you learn over time it works different ways for different guys.’”
“So I thought that was pretty interesting,” Robinson continued. ”Now when we’re here, sitting here trying to figure out who’s Tom’s quarterback, like how does he evaluate that? Is he just evaluating it from like, I want the guy who’s gone through the struggle… That’s why very, very few guys who are great players, were great coaches or general managers. Because they’re like, why can’t you do this? I did this.”
In light of those comments from Robinson, it was interesting to hear what Brady said to FS1 host Colin Cowherd about how he played the quarterback position.
“In my last Super Bowl I was a part of, it was two weeks of watching film… I knew Kansas City’s defense better than they knew themselves. I knew their body movements, the way their linebackers moved, the way their safeties moved,” Brady told Cowherd.
“Tyrann Mathieu, Nick Sorensen [and] Charvarius Ward. I knew everything they were doing. I got out there on the field, I looked up as I was walking to the line of scrimmage, I said ‘Ok, they’re blitzing’ and then I was dealing with it right away. I walked up, I said ‘Ok, they’re going to bail to Cover 2.’ Ball was snapped, Cover 2. I had the answers to the test. That’s where I was great. That’s where my magic superpower was. It wasn’t how fast I could run. It was how fast I could diagnose what they were doing.”
Looking ahead to how Brady’s comments might apply to the Raiders quarterback room, there’s a good chance he will be looking for someone who can process the game from a mental standpoint similar to the way he was able to do it out of college.
It’s possible that from Brady’s perspective… athleticism, arm talent and other physical capabilities will take a backseat to football IQ, work ethic and ability to process information.
Just something to think about as Brady and the Raiders inch closer to free agency and the draft.
For what it’s worth, there have been four rookie quarterbacks most commonly linked to the Raiders.
Cam Ward, Shedeur Sanders, Jaxson Dart and Will Howard are the four quarterbacks most would say have the best odds of being the next Raiders quarterback.
Among the names on that list, who might Brady consider to be the most like him in terms of preparation and processing information?
Inquiring minds would love to know.
