Oakland Raiders are right to work out top 2019 NFL Draft quarterbacks

The Oakland Raiders likely won’t be selecting a quarterback in this year’s 2019 NFL Draft, but the team is still right to work out the top signal-callers.

Rumors have swirled and will continue to swirl around the Oakland Raiders much anticipated No. 4 overall pick in the upcoming 2019 NFL Draft. While most of the football world is convinced that the Raiders won’t look to select a quarterback in the first round, there is still a portion that does believe that Oakland could pull the trigger.

Let’s get one thing straight here. Derek Carr is the Raiders quarterback and everything that the team has said and done in the offseason points to things remaining that way.

The Raiders appear to have a win-now mentality with their major offseason acquisitions of Antonio Brown, Trent Brown, etc. and it would make little-to-no sense for the team to draft a rookie quarterback at this stage.

But there certainly is smoke around the issues. And where there’s smoke, there typically tends to be a bit of fire.

Now, this isn’t to say that the team will draft a quarterback as it remains highly unlikely that they do so. However, it isn’t the worst idea to show interest in the position even if you aren’t ultimately going to go in that direction.

First of all, there’s no harm in at least doing the cliché “due diligence” by bringing the top quarterbacks in to study their game and get a good feel for them as prospects. If the team were to fall in love with one of the prospects, perhaps the team could even consider drafting him assuming he was still on the board when they picked.

The Raiders have been tied to the likes of Kyler Murray, Dwayne Haskins, and Drew Lock with the former two being much more intriguing prospects. If a player like Murray were to somehow slip to No. 4 overall — as unlikely as that is — Jon Gruden, Mike Mayock, and the rest of the front office would have a very interesting decision to make, depending on their feelings towards the 2018 Heisman Award winner.

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But those are far-fetched scenarios. While it can be impossible to predict anything in the wacky world of the NFL, it seems highly unlikely that any of that would happen.

What’s more likely, however, is that the Raiders are playing a game of chess at the moment. Gruden has been extraordinarily vocal about his love for the top quarterbacks in the 2019 NFL Draft, particularly Murray. All this does is add another team into the mix of potential franchises looking to select a quarterback in the upcoming draft.

If teams believe that the Raiders could, indeed, select a quarterback, the value of their selection goes up as does the value of those directly before them. Whether that means the Raiders try and shop the No. 4 pick to get even more draft capital than they already have or that the team is able to land a premier prospect — hello Josh Allen — that could fall to them, it’s a positive either way.

If the Raiders have any interest at all in moving on from Carr, it makes sense to at least do some background research on the top signal-callers in the draft. And even if they have no interest in selecting a quarterback, it at least makes sense to give off the impression that they do.

While it is true that where there’s smoke there’s fire, sometimes that smoke could simply be a smokescreen.