Yahoo News Raiders cut backup QB AJ McCarron, who they traded for before last season
Apparently, the Oakland Raiders didn’t like what they saw from AJ McCarron once they acquired him.
The Raiders, who traded a fifth-round pick to the Buffalo Bills for McCarron right before last season started, have cut the former Alabama star according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
McCarron struggled so much in the preseason last year he went from a candidate to start to on the roster bubble. The Bills found someone to give them a fifth-round pick for McCarron, one of Jon Gruden’s regrettable moves last year.
AJ McCarron will move on yet again
McCarron’s stature grew the longer he sat on the bench, which is common for NFL backup quarterbacks. It seems like a long time ago now, but McCarron was once a hot name. The Cleveland Browns, when Hue Jackson was head coach and Sashi Brown was general manager, once tried to trade the Bengals a second- and third-round pick for McCarron, a move that famously didn’t happen because of an email that didn’t go through. The Bengals tried to keep him from hitting free agency by arguing about service time, though they lost that battle and McCarron hit the market.
The Bills signed him to a two-year, $10 million deal and it looked like he could be a starter despite a modest (for a quarterback) contract. Even when the Bills drafted Josh Allen, it seemed McCarron could start while Allen learned. But McCarron was so bad in the preseason, the team chose Nathan Peterman instead.
And still, the Raiders traded for him.
Raiders didn’t get much from McCarron
Here’s what the Raiders got out of McCarron, for the cost of a fifth-round pick: Three passes, one completion, 8 yards.
The Raiders’ offseason this year is going much better, highlighted by a trade for Antonio Brown and some high-profile additions in free agency. It doesn’t completely eliminate the memories of a strange, bad offseason last year, and dumping McCarron is a reminder that Gruden had an adjustment period as he came back to the NFL.
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Frank Schwab is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
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