The Las Vegas Raiders *Must Sign* KIRK COUSINS! (My Perfect Off-Season Plan)

Jimmy Garoppolo being suspended for the use of performance enhancing drugs has to be one of the funnier things to ever happen. You got to be thinking Jimmy Garoppolo is trying to find that dealer like. Refund. I need a refund. They didn't work. They had the opposite effect. It's so funny, like Jimmy Garoppolo gets suspended and now the Raiders come out and say that we're going to release him and now everyone's making videos like what are the Raiders going to do at quarterback now that they need to replace Jimmy Garoppolo? It's like, uh, they replaced him last year when they started Aiden O'Connell. So now that he's released is not the time to start making videos about who could potentially replace Jimmy Garoppolo as the Raiders' starting quarterback. And also, It's hilarious that this is even a story, however, there is one key element of it that I would like to talk about, and I would like to personally thank James Garoppolo for gift-wrapping the Raiders. $11 million in cap space because there was obviously a contract in his clause that said, hey Jimmy, if you do something stupid like take performance enhancing drugs, you know, you won't do that. But if you do, you don't get some bonus money. Actually, we get it. And we're going to use it on Chris Jones. Well, probably not Chris Jones, but we're going to talk about my plan for the offseason. Jimmy Garoppolo, good teammate, bad football player. Never was good. And, you know, it was the wrong move to move off of Derek Carr for him. Although, I'm happy To be in the position we're in now, and if we had Derek Carr and we won more games, then maybe Josh McDaniels would still be the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. So in a weird, Matrix-y way, we have Jimmy Garoppolo to thank for all of the good stuff that's happened since he signed with us, like getting Josh McDaniels fired. That's weird. Thank you, Jimmy, and thanks for the money. I pride myself on being a man of integrity, and there's a lot of Jaden Daniels talk, and it's easy to get swept up. And making a big trade to get the guy that's going to be the end-all be-all of franchise quarterbacks Michael Vick meets Josh Allen meets Tom Brady Heisman Trophy winner AP Connection Brandon Ayuk blah blah blah I would be lying to you if I didn't say the idea of it is making me more and more excited and if slash when we do end up trading for the third overall pick Thank you, New England, ahead of time. I'm going to be excited about it. No ifs, ands, or buts. I will be on here screaming, jumping, saying, Jaden, you're my guy, blah, blah, blah. I'm not sold on him, though. And I have to be true, not only to myself, but to the viewer, and tell you what I actually think we should do in the offseason. Don't get me wrong. It's not like trading up for Jaden Daniels is a plan Z. It's great. It's a great idea. And if we're going to take a swing, let's take a swing for the guy that AP's coached before and that he thinks can get things rocking and rolling with Luke Getsy and Devontae and everybody. Let's do it. Let's make the trade. However, if I was the GM of the Raiders, this is the plan I would seriously consider. And it's not just because I burped in like three straight videos now. It's not just because I don't believe in some quarterbacks or I think, you know, our window is blah, blah, blah. I think there's a big elephant in the room that we have to talk about, and it's Devontae Adams. This plan that I have proposed for you, the viewer, and for Tom Telesco, if you're watching, Tom, you could use this plan. I'm sure you've already thought about it, but you can have it free of charge. Devontae Adams is getting older. He's still, I think, the best receiver in the league. But in a few years, he's going to lose a little bit of a step of an edge, okay? And if we draft someone like a Jaden Daniels and he doesn't turn out to be an immediate C.J. Stroud, we might lose some crossover of Jaden Daniels in his prime best football and Devontae Adams in his prime best football. Devontae Adams will just be leaving his prime when Jayden Daniels just enters his prime. Again, assuming he's not an Andrew Luck, Joe Burrow, C.J. Stroud. So what is my solution to this? What is my fix to make sure we could win games now? Get the quarterback of the future and utilize Devontae while we have him because I'm anti-trade for Devontae Adams. I'm anti-trade Devontae Adams, not trade for, trade Devontae Adams. And the reason I'm anti-trade Devontae Adams is because if you have a young quarterback, you need to give him the best chance to succeed, and that's with Devontae here. Patrick Mahomes came into the league and was going to Travis Kelsey and Tyree Kill, two of the best people to ever do it at their position. You need... The quarterback who's coming in to be confident and to have players to throw the football to. Look at Justin Fields. He's got nobody there, and now he's slipping. Kirk Cousins is behind me, and he's going to cost a lot of money, and Jimmy Garoppolo just gave us a lot of money. Here's what I'm proposing to the Raider Nation, to Tom Telesco, to AP, to get a seat to everybody. We go to Kirk Cousins and say, listen, we have the money. You've got two years. You've got two years with an unbelievable defense, the best defense you've ever had. Great weapons, Devontae, we're going to re-sign Jacobs, Michael Mayer, Trey Tucker, blah, blah, blah. We beat the Chiefs, we're the last team to beat the Chiefs. The other time we played them, we were up 14-0, it was competitive. We almost beat the Dolphins. You know, we were competitive with the Lions, with Garoppolo and McDaniels calling the plays. If you come in here and you are 100% healthy and you played the football that you played last year in Minnesota, which was his best statistical season so far, they were going to maybe win the division, compete with the Lions. They were easily going to make the playoffs. He was playing the best ball he's ever played. If Kirk signs on the dotted line, we will make the playoffs. If he plays all 17 games, we will, yeah, 17, we will 100% make the playoffs. He is a Pro Bowl-level quarterback, and once you get into the big dance, you never know what can happen. So step one is sign Kirk Cousins, your immediate contender to win the division, because the Chiefs, for whatever reason, struggle in a regular season. We've shown the blueprint of how we can beat them. And now we're going to beat other teams that we should have beat last year that we didn't, like the Steelers and the Bears, because we have very, very, very good quarterback play, two elite quarterback play every now and again. Step one is sign Kirk Cousins. Step two, with the 13th pick in the NFL draft, the Las Vegas Raiders select the best available wide receiver. The reason you do that is... Multiple fold, one fold, two fold, three fold. Like I said, Davante Adams, as good as he is right now, will one day not be good. And if you are going to plan for the future and try to win now, you have to start looking for his replacement. And the 13th overall pick could grab you, potentially, and a Dunze say if that person falls to 13. If not, the wide receiver class is so deep that you can take someone at 13 or maybe even trade back, take someone in the IU spot of the high teens, 17, 18, 19, 20. You draft Davante I'll take Adams replacement. You let him learn under Davante a few years. He could be a wide receiver three or four, depending on Trey Tucker. Jacoby's still there. Adunze or Nabers or whoever falls to that spot could be the person to link up with the future quarterback of the franchise, which we will be drafting this year in the second round. Whether that is someone like a J.J. McCarthy or Michael Penix that falls to round two. I think what you should do is take someone like Penix, who is my favorite guy, in the second round if he falls there. If we have to trade up to 33, 34, 35 to do it, that's okay. You have him and Aiden both ready to go if Kirk Cousins gets hurt again. If Kirk Cousins doesn't get hurt, we will make the playoffs with Kirk Cousins and the rest of the squad that we run it back with. Kirk Cousins can teach Penix and O'Connell or McCarthy and O'Connell or Rattler and O'Connell. And in two years time, when Kirk Cousins goes off into the sunset or does whatever he does, maybe we won a couple of playoff games. Who knows? Pennix and O'Connell will compete to be the starter with two years under their belt. Devontae will still be here. Odunze, or whoever the wide receiver is, will be in his third year, potentially just as good as Devontae now. AP and Getze will have a culture built, a playbook in place for these receivers to learn with these young quarterbacks. And O'Connell and Pennix or McCarthy or Rattler will be ready to take the reins from Kirk Cousins. And we won't have to worry about Devontae being out of his prime because we will have drafted a receiver this season. That is my plan for the Las Vegas Raiders for the 2024 NFL Draft and free agency. Step one, sign Kirk Cousins. Step two, draft a wide receiver in the first round. Step three, draft a quarterback in the second round. Again, I want to just preface all of this. I guess a preface at the end. Preface. Endface. I want to endface all of this with, if we trade up for Jaden Daniels, I love it. We're taking a big swing. We're trying to find our franchise guy. And if he turns out to be that guy immediately, huge, huge for us. But if he takes some time to develop, we are going to have to find a new number one. And maybe we do that next year or the year after. But if someone like Odunze falls to us and someone like Penix is available in the second round, And Penix has multiple years to stay healthy and to get stronger and to learn the playbook and to learn from a quarterback like Kirk Cousins or O'Connell for that matter. I think that's what you have to do. And then you have someone like O'Connell or Penix get ready to play if Kirk Cousins struggles and or tears his other Achilles. I think it's a foolproof plan. What do you think? Luke Getzey had his introductory press conference. And I saw a lot of comments that people were saying he looked like a baby John Gruden. I thought that was pretty funny because he did. He really did. He said a lot of things, you know, oh, I love the history of the Raiders and I love the blah, blah, blah. You know, Devante, we love each other, blah, blah, blah. There's one thing that everyone's been saying that he said that's huge. And he said, escapability is huge in terms of finding the next quarterback or something like that. You know, he said it was on display in the Super Bowl. That doesn't mean Lamar Jackson or Jaden Daniels. I mean, it could mean Jaden Daniels. There was a report today that said we're a team to look at for potentially trading up for Jaden Daniels. I've told you guys my fear with running quarterbacks is that, well, there's two things. My fear is that they get injured a lot. You know, at the first sign of first rate's not there, boom, they're gone. My other fear is kind of the Lamar Jackson syndrome, and it's evident every time he has a big moment in the playoffs. I think Lamar Jackson, I don't know him, I'm just saying from the outside looking in, I think sometimes he thinks he has to prove that he can win a game by passing the football. And it's almost as if he doesn't trust himself to pick up the first down running it. No, I'm going to throw it to Zay Flowers into triple coverage. And it's picked off, and you lose. I'm worried that somebody whose first option is to run is going to use that more than he should or way less than he should. Rarely has a run-first quarterback won the Super Bowl. It's actually almost never happened. Patrick Mahomes is the most mobile quarterback to win a Super Bowl in the last 10 years. It's been a lot of Brady and Nick Foles and Staffords and, you know... Quarterbacks like that and when you talk about escapability, Stafford, a quarterback like Stafford or Joe Burrow, they have escapability. They're not per se mobile but they can escape the pocket and make the right throws when it is called for. Derek Carr had escapability, he just damn near never used it which is the reason why we can never go over the top with someone like him. Pennix and McCarthy have a little wiggle to them. They can move. They're not statues. Aiden O'Connell, I understand where you could say he's pretty much a statue. He's Tom Brady. He's Jared Goff in terms of I'm dropping back. And if my guys aren't there, someone better get open fast because I'm going to get sacked. And I understand the frustration that that comes with. I would just be a little wary to get a quarterback whose main option is to run the football unless he is a Lamar Jackson or Michael Vick. And even then, those quarterbacks have not shown really to be able to win the biggest, biggest, biggest games besides, say, a Cam Newton, who also had an absolute rocket of an arm. And Cam Newton didn't even win the Super Bowl, but they were in it a bunch. Speaking of the Jaden Daniels report, here's the report, OK? Again, like this is like on Bleacher Report, OK? Jaden Daniels, a name to watch as possible quarterback to replace Garoppolo. Garoppolo has been replaced! Stop saying that! It drives me crazy. Here's the article. As the Raiders look for a new quarterback this offseason, one name they're keeping an eye on is 2023 Heisman winner Jayden Daniels. Appearing on Saturday... Okay, so this was today. Jeremy Fowler cited Daniels as a name to watch for the Raiders. And then here's the quote. Jane Daniels out of LSU is a name to watch. As I've talked to a few teams who have pointed out, Antonio Pierce, who was with them at ASU back in the day, loves him. Of course, he went to LSU on the Heisman and could be a top three pick. Raiders picked 13, so they would have to make a huge jump to get there. Yeah, thanks. Not rocket science. Okay, at least they say this. If it wasn't clear during the season when Jimmy Garoppolo was benched after Josh McDaniels was fired, it seems obvious that the 32-year-old won't be back for a second season in Las Vegas. No ----. If the Raiders hope to draft Daniels, they are most likely going to have to make a significant trade to make it happen. I mean, why are people saying that like we don't know this? One recent example, so here's a likely package we'd have to match, of a team moving outside the top 10 into the top 3 was the San Francisco 49ers in 2021 when they drafted Trey Lance. Whoops. They dealt four picks to Miami, including three first-rounders, to move nine spots from 12 to 3. Okay, so let's talk about the 49ers because I've seen some people commenting, Well, the 49ers traded up for Trey Lance. Let's see how that worked out. You know, rarely does a team trading into the top three to draft a quarterback ever work. But rarely in the case of a team trading up for the quarterback, do they have a quarterback ready to maybe save you if that doesn't work. And I'm not saying that Aiden O'Connell is Brock Purdy, but nobody cares about the 49ers and whiffing on the Trey Lance of it all because Brock Purdy was there to save the day. So, you know, I've said this in videos in the past, but the Raiders are in a unique situation to be able to draft a quarterback, take a big swing, and if it doesn't work, you always have somebody like Aiden O'Connell who could develop into something special. I refuse to give up on him. If you guys watch the highlights, he made some throws that multiple-year starters in this league do not make. I could think of a few off the top of my head. In the Jets game, he looked left, turned right, Devontae triple coverage, laser beam. There was a play to Jacoby Myers over the top in the Kansas City Chiefs game that was unbelievable. There was a play to Jacoby Myers in the Chiefs game on the other side of the field where he threw it over two people right in the bread basket. He had some absolute bombs to Trey Tucker right in stride. He did not underthrow him like Derek Carr would have. He's made some throws that's shown me enough to go, wait a second, let's not just give up on him. And I keep banging this drum only because of this. If the season starts next year and we have Aiden O'Connell and insert rookie quarterback competing for the job, do not get pissed off if Aiden O'Connell wins the job because you're surprised. If you're mad because you think the other guy should start, whatever, that's fine. But do not come into week one surprised that Antonio Pierce and Tom Telesco and Luke Getze We'll be right back. Roll with Aiden O'Connell because he's the more prepared quarterback to play in the National Football League at this current moment. I'm just telling you, there's a world in which that could happen, and I'm trying to prepare you for the emotions you might feel if that does transpire. It might not. I could be wrong. All I'm saying is he showed enough from me to say, let's give him a chance. Antonio Pierce is going to trade up for Jayden Daniels. I think it's basically a lock at this point, unless the Patriots are insane and are asking for eight first round picks or something like that. I don't know what their new GM coaching structure really is like. I know it's Jerod Mayo. That's all I know. We're going to trade up for somebody. But when Antonio Pierce says something, he means it. And he said it's going to be an open competition. He's not just going to give Jayden Daniels the keys to the castle. He loves him, but he's going to make him work like everybody else works. And if Aiden O'Connell, you know, has the locker room and Dante goes, you know what? Aiden's better than Jaden. Hey, that rhymes. And, you know, people are like, we got to roll with this guy for a few games. If it doesn't work, then we'll go to Jaden. You know, like, just don't be surprised if that happens. I'm telling you. I'm not trying to prepare you for the worst. I'm just trying to prepare you for potentially the inevitable. If they draft a rookie and it doesn't work out right away. And when people say, oh, you traded up for Trey Lance. Look at how that worked out. They had Brock Purdy. We've got Aiden. I'm not saying that Aiden is Brock. I'm not saying that Brock is Aiden. Here's what I want from you guys. I want you guys to map out your ideal offseason plan. For the Raiders this year, what kind of free agents do you want? Are you looking defensive tackle, linebacker, corner, safety, offensive line? Are you looking for a new running back? Should we re-sign Jacobs? Baker Mayfield's out there. Jameis Winston, Kirk Cousins. Who should we sign? Should we get a veteran quarterback as a bridge? A la Baker Mayfield, or should we get the best available guy, Kirk Cousins, and try to run and win with him? Should we draft a Jayden Daniels, a J.J. McCarthy, a Rattler, a... What's that guy's name? A Jordan Travis? A Travis Jordan? What's that guy's name? You guys know what I'm talking about. What should we do? I want comments in the comment section detailing your plans. And another thing I would like for you to do is to check out the Patreon. You get videos like this early, you get exclusive access to ad-free content, your name at the end of the credits, you get a bunch of stuff for a small small fee, all the Madden videos are going to go up on Patreon weekly, and then at the end of my season playing through it, the whole thing will be posted as one long video. So if you want to see them weekly, you hop over to Patreon. If you want to wait till the full video, that'll be out in a month or so. We hit 5,000 subs in... Two months. We went from four to five. It took us a year to go from three to four. And it's my fault because I was posting this off there. And then it took us two months to go from four to five. So how fast can we get to six? Can we do it in a month and a half? Probably not. But if you're watching and you like what you see, please be sure to subscribe. It is free after all. No charge to you. I love you guys. And I'll see you next time.