Scott Gulbransen
Everyone walked into the Las Vegas Raiders OTAs ready to watch a quarterback competition that was never really a competition. Kirk Cousins against Fernando Mendoza, the bargain veteran against the No. 1 overall pick, with Cousins taking the first-team reps and Mendoza easing in behind him. That’s the story the entire building is built around right now, and it’s the story every camera and notebook in Henderson is chasing.
Aidan O’Connell threw three touchdowns on Thursday and almost nobody noticed.
They’d better start as the Raiders have an asset that both adds depth and possible trade value.
The Unsung Value of Aidan O’Connell for the Raiders
That’s the part that keeps nagging at me. O’Connell had the best day of any quarterback during the only media session of the week, hitting Carter Runyon, Shedrick Jackson and Dareke Young in team periods, and the reaction around it was a collective shrug.
Levi Edwards of Raiders.com flagged it. Klint Kubiak, when reporters kept funneling every question toward Mendoza or Cousins, brought up O’Connell himself without being asked.
“It’s been solid,” Kubiak said of the fourth-year passer. A head coach volunteering praise for the guy nobody’s asking about tells you something the depth chart doesn’t.
I get why he’s an afterthought. He’s slated as QB3 behind a former first overall pick and a veteran who’s started 100-plus NFL games. The conventional wisdom says he’s a holdover who won’t survive training camp, a body to keep the room sharp until the Raiders move on. Justin Melo of NFL Draft SI wrote that O’Connell isn’t expected to stick past camp. That’s the framing that’s hardened into fact without anybody really testing it.
Related: Las Vegas Raiders Have One of NFL’s ‘Most Improved Position Groups’
The Task Ahead for O’Connell
Here’s what testing it looks like. O’Connell is 27 with 3,932 passing yards, 20 touchdowns and 11 interceptions across 21 career games. He beat the Chiefs twice as a starter, which is more than most quarterbacks in the league can say over the last few years.
Nick Shook of NFL.com ranked the top 15 quarterbacks on rookie contracts heading into 2026 and put O’Connell at No. 12, ahead of names that get a lot more airtime than he does. That’s not a practice-squad arm. That’s a functional NFL backup who has actually won games, sitting third on a depth chart and getting talked about like a roster cut.
The trade conversation is where this gets interesting, because the market is reading him cheap.
Bleacher Report’s Moe Moton, my friend and former co-host, pegged O’Connell’s value at a 2027 or 2028 sixth-round pick, calling him a high-end backup and capable fill-in starter while knocking his deep-ball placement, his pocket mobility and an injury history that’s cost him time the last two seasons. Those knocks are real and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. He doesn’t slide around the pocket like you’d want and the deep ball comes and goes. A sixth-rounder is the honest floor on a guy with those limitations.
But a sixth-round pick for a quarterback who has beaten Patrick Mahomes’ team twice feels like the league pricing him off the bad tape and ignoring the wins. Quarterback-needy teams in late summer don’t always have the luxury of being picky, and a passer who’s shown he can win a real game holds value that doesn’t show up in a spring depth chart. The Raiders sitting at QB3 with a guy like that is either a luxury they can afford or an asset they’re undervaluing, and I lean toward the second one.
Future at Quarterback for the Raiders is Cousins and Mendoza, But…
None of this changes the obvious. Cousins is going to start Week 1. Mendoza is the future and the whole reason the franchise spent the No. 1 pick. O’Connell is not beating either of them out, and his best-case scenario in Las Vegas is holding a clipboard. The deck is what it is.
What I’d push back on is the idea that because he can’t win the job, he doesn’t matter. A quarterback throwing dimes in late May while the rest of the league sleeps on him is exactly the kind of asset that turns into something useful, whether that’s insurance behind a 37-year-old Cousins or a midsummer trade chip when somebody’s QB2 goes down in camp. The Raiders don’t have to decide today. They just shouldn’t decide he’s worthless because everyone stopped looking.
O’Connell keeps showing up and producing in a room where the conversation has moved on without him. At some point that stops being a footnote.
