McDaniels Admires Rookie O'Connell's Consistency

Las Vegas Raiders rookie quarterback Aidan O'Connell has a lot to learn, but he's off to the right start.

Las Vegas Raiders rookie Aidan O'Connell is well through his first NFL training camp, and he's learning to take on the right approach.

Rookies can often get easily rattled and have poor practices, but O'Connell has stayed consistent, a habit that has gained the respect of Raiders Coach Josh McDaniels.

"I think a young quarterback, this is his first opportunity to really start to play this position at this level and it's difficult," McDaniels said when he addressed the media Thursday. "And so, there's so many things that go into having a good play, let alone a good practice, let alone a good week. And he's learning that, so I couldn't be more impressed by his consistency and his approach. He doesn't get high, low, up, down. He doesn't really do any of that, it's just kind of like this all the time, which is great. It's a great way to be for a young player, especially at this position. 

"He learns, whether he does something well or there's a mistake, he learns from it and he very rarely repeats an error, which is, I'd say, a very critical element to improving at this position. So, I like what Aidan is doing. And again, every play isn’t perfect, but there's a lot of progress that he makes daily because of the way he approaches it."

O'Connell could very well get the start on Sunday in the Raiders' first preseason game, but for now, the decision is still up in the air.

"We'll talk about it as we go," McDaniels said. "Again, anytime you have the joint practices, you have such a great opportunity to get a ton of work in in these next couple of days. So, I'd say based on how that goes, the health of the team after two days, where we're at, we'll kind of have a better idea of what we want to do. We're looking at kind of three days, today, tomorrow and Sunday. We've got three great opportunities to work against them, one of which being the game. So, we're going to try to divide the repetitions up appropriately and then see what we need to do on Sunday."

O'Connell played four seasons at Purdue, having been with the program for six total. He was selected by the Raiders in the fourth round of this year's NFL Draft.

The Silver and Black open the preseason by hosting the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, Aug. 13, at 4 p.m. EDT/1 p.m. PDT.

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