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The Las Vegas Raiders had a tough 2024 campaign. While Sin City’s defense held their own despite a rash of injuries through most of the year, the offense’s consistent slow starts to games truly plagued the team. A big reason for the unit’s struggles was quarterback play; both from Gardner Minshew and Aidan O’Connell.
Minshew beat out O’Connell in the preseason to win the starting job in Las Vegas entering Week 1 of the regular season. The first-year Raiders signal caller held that role until around halfway through the year, struggling mightily in the meantime. He was benched, then returned, then suffered an injury.
O’Connell would then go on to start the rest of the year, with some appearances from Desmond Ridder sprinkled in between.
Let’s take a closer look at O’Connell’s season, which had its fair share of both highs and lows.
Las Vegas Raiders 2024 Player Review: Aidan O’Connell
Aidan O’Connell’s Best Moments
O’Connell’s best performance came in an unexpected matchup. On Black Friday, the Raiders took the road to battle the Kansas City Chiefs. Despite being in a tough environment and in the middle of a long losing streak, Las Vegas put up a fight, and were a fumbled snap on the final drive away from a victory.
In that game, O’Connell shined. He threw for 340 yards and two touchdowns, finishing the game with a passer rating of 116.4. The Purdue alum made some jaw-dropping throws which stunned the Chiefs crowd, including this bomb to Tre Tucker.
Ironically, O’Connell’s second-best performance came at a time in which Raiders fans hoped he’d play poorly. The Raiders once had a 2-12 record with the rights to the first overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. Then, they knocked off the Jacksonville Jaguars, which killed their hopes at landing that coveted selection.
O’Connell was a big reason for that win. He completed 24-of-38 passes for 257 yards, and made this insane play to keep his team alive in the fourth quarter.
In a season where Las Vegas struggled tremendously, O’Connell did have some success towards the end of the year. During the Raiders final win of the season against the New Orleans Saints, O’Connell threw for 242 yards and two touchdowns while earning a solid passer rating at 97.6. He followed that up with another strong performance in the final week of the season, netting himself a passer rating of 94.5
A Closer Look At O’Connell’s Season
Despite those strong performances, though, O’Connell did have some struggles. Against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he completed just 11 passes for 104 yards. There were some other disappointing performances, but to his defense, a couple of those came in games in which he didn’t originally start.
While wins and losses aren’t totally fair to credit to quarterbacks alone, the Raiders record while O’Connell was the starter does show the full picture of what he brings to the table. The 26-year-old showed a few improvements from his rookie year with both his completion percentage and passer rating growing.
However, the Raiders were 2-5 in the games he started in 2024, compared to his 5-5 record in 2023. O’Connell has some nice moments, but isn’t good enough to lead a winning offense right now.
At least not in Las Vegas.
All in all, O’Connell did make slight improvements in some statistical categories while remaining stagnant in others. His completion percentage jumped slightly in his second year, going from 62.1-percent to 63.4. His passer rating also took a jump from 83.9 to 86.7, although that’s still not too impressive. O’Connell’s 12-7 TD-INT ratio from his rookie year didn’t improve a ton, with him throwing eight touchdowns and four interceptions in 2024.
Although Aidan O’Connell gave us some fun moments this year, he didn’t prove himself enough to be considered the Raiders’ quarterback of the future. With that said, the quarterback situation as a whole remains up in the air heading into the offseason.
There’s a strong chance he remains on the roster as a backup, or potentially a bridge option.
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