Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports
Coming into Sunday afternoon, Terrelle Pryor had a lot of eyes on him to see if the Oakland Raiders made the right decision giving him the starting quarterback spot over Matt Flynn.
Well, after Oakland’s first game against the Indianapolis Colts, I think it’s pretty safe to say Pryor definitely deserved to win the starting job.
Pryor was 19-for-29 today for 217 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions. The bigger story was what Pryor did on the ground, though, rushing for 112 yards on 13 attempts. Not only that, but Oakland’s offensive line problems weren’t really that big of a deal, because Pryor could avoid whatever pass rush the Colts could bring and make a play out of it.
There were even times where the pass rush actually helped Pryor and the Raiders’ offense because when Pryor scrambled out of the pocket, Indianapolis got distracted and took their attention off of the receivers. This resulted in some pretty big third-down conversions, as well as other big plays down the field.
The Raiders lost the game after Pryor threw a late interception, giving the Colts the 21-17 win. There are some issues the Raiders need to address this week in practice, but the team looked a lot better overall than most people expected. A lot of people expected the Raiders to have a terrible season and even worse with Pryor taking the snaps, but now, Pryor might actually give the Raiders a glimmer of hope to make this a good season.
Despite the loss, there is a lot to build on from this game and Pryor, as well as the rest of this Raiders team, should improve from here on out and be happy with what they did in Week 1. After all, even Rome wasn’t built in one day.
