If you believe the agent for Oakland Raider quarterback Terrelle Pryor, the team in general and coach Dennis Allen in particular would rather he flop that flourish.
That’s what Jerome Stanley told CSNBayArea.com.
“I think they’re putting him in hopes that he fails,” Stanley said. “That’s what I think coach is doing. I think they’re putting him in hopes that he has a bad game, so he can then justify the (reserve quarterback) Matt McGloin situation. I think that’s what’s going on. I do. And it’s ridiculous.”
He was not done.
“You have to understand the coach is putting him in, he doesn’t want him to look good,” he added. “And you can write that. He doesn’t want him to look good because, if he looks good this week, it makes the past five weeks look like a bad decision (to use McGloin). [Allen] doesn’t want him to look good; he wants him to look bad. That is what is going on.”
If Pryor agrees, he was not saying. He, in fact, said through Twitter that he disagreed with his representative and was grateful for “the opportunity given to me by this great organization.”
Background: Pryor won the job in training camp, beating out Matt Flynn, starting eight of the Raiders’ first nine games. (He missed the Washington Redskins game with a concussion.)
McGloin, the fourth-stringer in training camp, took over after Pryor suffered a sprained MCL in his right knee against the New York Giants on Nov. 10 and has started the past six games, remaining the starter even after Pryor’s injury healed. The undrafted rookie free agent out of Penn State won his first start Nov. 17 against the horrific Houston Texans with the help of Oakland’s defense, but he hasn’t won since.
For his part, Allen, who was not granted a request for a contract extension, said: “We want to get another opportunity to see, and we’ve said for a while now that we want to be able to evaluate Terrelle, so here’s an opportunity to go in and do that. Listen, when Terrelle’s played, he’s gone in and done a good job. So we anticipate he’ll go in and play well.”
Oakland is 3-5 in Pryor’s starts. Pryor has a passer rating of 66.0 in completing 57.7 percent of his passes (135 of 234) for 1,591 yards with five touchdowns and 11 interceptions.
“We got a chance to see Matt McGloin for six games. I liked a lot of things that I saw in Matt,” Allen said. It’s been a while since we’ve gotten an opportunity to see Terrelle in a game, and I want to get him in the game and get another opportunity to evaluate him.”