Raiders' Aidan O'Connell Replaced by Gardner Minshew After Suffering Hand Injury

On Sunday, the Las Vegas Raiders took on the Los Angeles Rams and quickly lost their starting quarterback. Early in the first quarter, Aidan O'Connell suffered a hand injury by slapping hands with Rams defender Kamren Curl and had to leave the game. He was replaced by Gardner Minshew.

Here's video of the O'Connell injury; he headed to the locker room shortly thereafter.

Aidan O’Connell #raiders

Looks like his thumb gets caught on the defenders hand. Thumb injuries make it very difficult to grip/throw. We’ll see if he can return pic.twitter.com/fEvtvErWUf
— Tom Christ, PT, DPT, OCS, FAAOMPT (@FantasyInjuryT) October 20, 2024

Minshew held the starting job for the Raiders over the first five weeks of the season but didn't play well enough to hold off the second-year O'Connell, going 2-3. Head coach Antonio Pierce announced Minshew would be benched for AOC ahead of Week 6. However, AOC didn't do much better and the Raiders lost his first start of 2024.

Now Vegas is back to Minshew, and will be for the rest of the day. Pierce said on the broadcast he didn't think O'Connell would be back vs. the Rams.

It's the Minshew show again for the Raiders.