No one had Brock Purdy vs. Jarrett Stidham for Game of the Year on their 2022 NFL bingo card did they?
Tashaun Gipson ruined this story.
At approximately 4:44 Eastern Standard Time on January 1st, Jarrett Stidham threw his first ever NFL touchdown pass to Darren Waller from 24 yards out on a play action boot pass. For someone who was thrust into a starting spot against the nation’s number one defense, that’s one way to start the game.
Rewind to August, not a single soul would’ve ever seen this coming. The Raiders, with Derek Carr and Davante Adams are out of playoff contention and forced to bench their starting quarterback?
“Blasphemy,” one of our staff editor yells from across the room.
Fast forward to last week, following Las Vegas’ latest blunder to the Pittsburgh Steelers, Derek Carr was benched in possibility of a potential trade next season. Enter Jarrett Stidham, a 2019 entrant to the NFL by way of the New England Patriots. Backing up Tom Brady had to have served him well.
Stidham “went off” against the NFL’s 2nd ranked defense, throwing for 365 yards and 3 touchdowns. Completing 23/34 of his passes, Stidham did end up throwing 2 interceptions, one that essentially sealed the game in overtime by setting up the 49ers in striking distance for a game-winning field goal.
While Jarrett didn’t complete the upset, he certainly didn’t take the opportunity for granted, “Playing on a team, football’s the ultimate team sport. And that’s why we play, is to play for the guys in the locker room each and every week. And like I said, that’s just the joy of getting to play this game. You get to meet a lot of amazing people: coaches, players, support staff. There’s just so many awesome people you get to go to work with every day and you grow close to. I mean, I spend more time with these guys than I do my own family. So you just get close, and you want to do everything you can to make those people happy. So yeah I mean, it’s tough the way that today went, but I thought we fought extremely hard until the end, obviously.”
The Raiders hung around the playoff race until late in the year, even through a dismal season, until their loss to the Steelers last week, where head coach Josh McDaniels decided to sit his star quarterback Derek Carr in exchange for Auburn product Jarrett Stidham getting his first start.
