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It's been my thinking that Minshew will be the opening day starter for the Raiders.   Other noteworthy veteran backups: Jacoby Brissett, $8m (and Maye might not be ready to start Week 1); Tyrod Taylor/Marcus Mariota, $6m; Andy Dalton, $5m; Joe Flacco, $4.5m (with escalators that can go to nearly $9m); Jameis Winston, $4m. Those are all new contracts in 2024.   And then Minshew is making $12.5m/year with $15m guaranteed. That's a different kind of contract. Another one in this tier is Sam Darnold, who signed for one year, $10m, and is likely to be the starter at the beginning of the season.   So yeah, unless Aidan O'Connell is fantastic in camp and preseason, I think it's Minshew as QB1.

Gardner had his ups and downs but like you said with him in there we were 7-6 and was a play or 2 away of winning the division. 7-6 for a guy that is considered just a great backup and not a legit starter is respectable. I would take that all day. AR being 2-2 in his starts is promising leading into 2024. When I watched Gardner and AR play last season, to me I think defenses feared AR more because of his running ability and arm strength. 

I wouldn't put it that way. I'd say in spite of having significant limitations at QB. Minshew provides some stability and a decent floor, but even then, his statistical output was meager, and there are obvious constraints on the offense when he's your starter. And with him as the starter, we went 7-6, which is admirable for a backup, but obviously puts a cap on your team's ability to compete.   As you and others have mentioned, there was some truly dreadful QBing last season. (Side note, but the Colts greatly benefited from facing a lot of those struggling QBs. I've mentioned this in discussions about the defensive performance as well.) I think it's a good thing we had Minshew, otherwise things could have been much worse. He deserves some credit for playing as well as he did, especially when you see how bad it can be with other backups; we had some of that in 2022, and there was plenty of it around the league in 2023.    But I also think that when we're objective about Minshew's performance and ability, it's obvious that having him as your starter for 13 games isn't a good thing.