Saturday night’s stunning news about the impact of Raiders quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo’s lingering foot injury on his contract presents good news and bad news for the team.
The good news is that the Raiders are protected, to the point that they might never have to pay him a cent if the foot injury prevents him from playing.The bad news is that if Garoppolo can’t play quarterback for the Raiders, who will?
The absence of a clear and obvious Plan B (Brian Hoyer is the current veteran backup, and Aidan O’Connell was selected in the draft) given the tenuous status of Plan A puts the recent comments from receiver Davante Adams in a different light.
“[The front office] think this is the best bet for us right now to put us in a position to be urgent,” Adams told TheRinger.com. “We don’t see eye-to-eye on what we think is best for us right now. . . . I’m going to have to buy into this and try to be as optimistic as possible. It’s not what I expected to happen, but it’s something that’s the reality now.”
This really is quite the reality for the Raiders. The concerns regarding the foot sufficiently freaked the team out to get them to strip the deal of its $11.25 million signing bonus and move it all to 2023 base salary that might not ever be paid. And while it’s great to have financial protections, it’s hard to say that the Raiders have any real football protections.
Some will say that the Raiders must not be all that concerned about Garoppolo, or they would have had a better backup. The contract says otherwise. The contract says it’s a serious concern. So serious that the Raiders weren’t comfortable paying him anything until the foot injury recovers to the team’s satisfaction.
The fans currently might not be feeling much satisfaction regarding the overall quarterback strategy, and everyone might have a better understanding of why Adams said the things regarding his own lack of satisfaction with the team.
Here he is, one of the best receivers in the NFL, and he has to hope that Garoppolo’s foot injury -- which was bad enough to get the Raiders to dramatically re-work his contract -- will sufficiently heal to ensure that Adams isn’t catching balls this year from an aging journeyman or the eighth quarterback taken in the 2023 draft.
Who wouldn’t be a little pissed off about that situation?