On Saturday, former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor said that he’ll be willing to play whatever position his new NFL team wants him to play.
Pryor may get a chance to make good on that vow.
John Clayton of ESPN reports that the Raiders are more interested in using Pryor as a receiver than as a quarterback.
We can think of a few reasons for that. Specifically, 4.36 reasons.
The Raiders love speed. And Pryor showed on Saturday that he has incredible straight-line speed.
Some Raiders fans are pessimistic. My cousin Josh, one of the few Raiders fans I know, predicts that Pryor will never play a game at any position in the NFL.
I think Pryor will. In fact, he reminds me of a former West Virginia jack-of-all-trades who only became a full-time receiver during his senior season, when the Mountaineers were mired in a 1-4 start. Jerry Porter played some quarterback and a lot of safety before landing in the position he’d call home for his NFL career. Pryor, who likely would have inked with -- and gotten his ink at -- WVU if Rich Rodriguez hadn’t abandoned the program for Ann Arbor, has the ability to play a bunch of positions.
Regardless of Pryor’s ceiling at the quarterback position, the Raiders seem to traditionally put more emphasis on the guys who catch the passes than the guys who throw them. And so, instead of making the mistake that the Broncos made in using a first-round pick on Tim Tebow and (to date) keeping him at his preferred position, the Raiders could be ready to see if Pryor can become a combination of the guy on whom they passed in 2007 in Calvin Johnson and the guy whom they’ve been hoping to rediscover for more than 25 years in Cliff Branch.