Aidan O’Connell: Walk-On, Fourth-Round Pick, and the Most Durable Backup in Las Vegas
Aidan O’Connell received exactly one scholarship offer coming out of high school. It was from Davenport University, a Division II program in Michigan. He turned it down, walked on at Purdue with no guaranteed roster spot, and sat out two full seasons without taking a snap. By 2023, the Las Vegas Raiders were trading draft picks to move up in the fourth round specifically to get him.
That arc doesn’t happen a lot. Walk-ons who eventually start NFL games are a short list. O’Connell, born September 1, 1998, in Long Grove, Illinois, is on it.
Background: Long Grove to West Lafayette
He grew up the middle child of six siblings – four brothers named Sean, Patrick, Liam, and Seamus, and one sister, Grace. He played football and basketball at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, and in his single season as starting quarterback he threw for 2,741 yards and 26 touchdowns, both school records. Good numbers. Still not enough to get a Power Five look.
The original plan was Wheaton College. His brother played there, he committed on February 3, 2017, and less than a month later he reversed course and accepted a preferred walk-on spot at Purdue instead. No scholarship. No guarantee. He didn’t play in 2017 or 2018.
By 2019 he was in six games, threw for 1,101 yards, eight touchdowns, and four interceptions on a 62.8 percent completion rate. The 2020 season ended after three games with a foot injury that required surgery. This is around the point where most walk-on quarterbacks disappear from rosters. O’Connell did not.
The Purdue Years That Actually Mattered
His 2021 season was the one. He took over as the starter in October after Jack Plummer struggled, and finished with 315 completions on 440 attempts, 3,712 yards, 28 touchdowns, and 11 interceptions. His 71.6 completion rate set a single-season school record at Purdue. He earned second-team All-Big Ten honors.
In 2022 the numbers dipped slightly – 64.1 percent, 22 touchdowns, 13 interceptions – and some of the pre-draft excitement cooled with them. That inconsistency is part of his actual profile, not something that gets glossed over. His best plays at Purdue looked like a first-round quarterback. His worst looked like someone who had no business being on an NFL roster. PFF’s Steve Palazzolo put it in exactly those terms before the 2023 draft: “His best plays at Purdue, it was like: ‘Man, this dude can do it all.’ But his worst plays, he looked like an undrafted free agent who should never see the field.”
He finished his college career with 9,219 passing yards, among Purdue’s all-time leaders. He also earned a master’s degree in Technology, Leadership, and Innovation in May 2022, a detail that gets mentioned in every Raiders press conference about his football intelligence and then promptly forgotten in the next news cycle.
College Stats by Season
| Year | G | Att | Comp% | Yards | TD | INT | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 6 | 164 | 62.8% | 1,101 | 8 | 4 | 86.4 |
| 2020 | 3 | 136 | 64.7% | 916 | 7 | 2 | – |
| 2021 | 13 | 440 | 71.6% | 3,712 | 28 | 11 | – |
| 2022 | 13 | 499 | 64.1% | 3,490 | 22 | 13 | – |
| Career | 35+ | 1,239 | 66.7% | 9,219 | 65 | 30 | – |
The 2023 NFL Draft and How He Ended Up in Las Vegas
The pick itself has a wrinkle worth knowing. The Raiders traded up within the fourth round, giving New England a fifth-round pick (144th overall, which became offensive lineman Atonio Mafi) and a sixth-round selection (214th overall, Ameer Speed) to acquire the 135th pick and take O’Connell. Las Vegas actively spent draft capital to get him specifically. He wasn’t a default selection.
He went to a team with Jimmy Garoppolo as the starter. The expectation was that he’d learn, hold a clipboard, maybe appear on an injury report or two. NFL Network’s Steve Smith Sr. compared the situation to Brock Purdy taking over San Francisco in 2022 and predicted O’Connell would end up doing the same thing in Las Vegas. That prediction got remembered when it came true.
His pre-draft scouting profile read like a fair assessment of a player who is genuinely hard to slot. Accurate from short to intermediate range, smart processor, plus instincts for the position. Limited athleticism – his 40 time was 4.96 seconds at the combine. Concerns about attacking man coverage down the seam consistently. The consensus ceiling was quality backup. That is still, in 2026, the consensus ceiling.
Three NFL Seasons: What Actually Happened
In 2023 he was supposed to back up Garoppolo. Garoppolo got hurt, O’Connell started, and he went 5–5 as a starter in his rookie year – 2,218 yards, 12 touchdowns, 7 interceptions, one rushing TD. His best single game was December 14, 2023, against the Chargers: four touchdown passes, a 120.7 passer rating. He completed 34 of 50 passes for 271 yards in his first career start against Northwestern back in college; in the NFL, his first start ended cleaner than most anyone expected from a fourth-round walk-on.
In 2024 he lost a training camp competition to Gardner Minshew, which was the right call at the time – Minshew posted a 70.7 completion percentage through his first five games. But turnovers derailed Minshew, and O’Connell took over as the starter in Week 6. Then in Week 7, he took a shot against Pittsburgh and fractured his thumb. Out for the rest of the season. Minshew came back, then Desmond Ridder came in off Arizona’s practice squad, and the whole thing became the kind of quarterback carousel that ends coaching staffs.
In 2025 he fractured his wrist in the preseason finale against Arizona and missed the first ten weeks on injured reserve. He returned in November, served as the third quarterback behind Geno Smith and Kenny Pickett, and appeared in exactly one game: Week 18, a 14-12 win over Kansas City. His 102 passing yards in that game marked the Raiders’ first win over the Chiefs at Allegiant Stadium. As endings to difficult seasons go, that one lands.
Career NFL Statistics
| Season | G (GS) | Att | Comp% | Yards | TD | INT | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 11 (10) | 342 | 62.6% | 2,218 | 12 | 7 | 83.5 |
| 2024 | 9 (6) | 264 | 62.1% | 1,612 | 8 | 4 | – |
| 2025 | 1 (1) | ~ | – | 102 | 0 | 0 | 16.3 |
| Career | 21 (17) | 608 | 62.0% | 3,932 | 20 | 11 | 84.1 |
Three seasons, two fractured bones, a thumb and a wrist. The injury history isn’t bad luck in the way a freak accident is bad luck – it’s the injury pattern of a quarterback who takes hits because he doesn’t run away from them.
What Kind of Quarterback He Actually Is
The honest version: he’s a rhythm passer who works well within structure and struggles when the structure breaks down. His 62.0 percent career completion rate and 84.1 passer rating are serviceable for a backup. They’re not starter numbers on a playoff team, and his scouting profile said exactly that in 2023 before he took a single NFL snap.
What doesn’t show up in those numbers is his processing speed. Kirk Cousins, after signing with Las Vegas in the spring of 2026, said publicly that he expects to rely on O’Connell the same way he’s leaned on every quarterback room veteran he’s shared a locker with – as a sounding board after series, a second set of eyes on the defense. Cousins specifically said, “I’ll come off to the sideline and I want to get Aidan’s opinion too.” That’s not a throwaway quote. Cousins has said versions of that about every backup he’s worked with and he means it.
What I find genuinely interesting about O’Connell’s NFL arc is that the scouting report written before his first preseason game in 2023 turned out to be almost exactly right – and yet he still started 17 NFL games. The scouting ceiling was “competent backup.” He hit it. And in a league full of quarterbacks who were projected as franchises and became clipboard holders, hitting your ceiling is not nothing.
Personal Life: Faith, Family, and the Quiet Stuff
He married Jael Johnson in 2022. She was a four-year letterwinner with Purdue Volleyball and a two-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree. They met at Purdue, which is not surprising. He is openly religious and has described his faith as central to how he processes the instability of his NFL career – six different offensive coordinators in three years is an unusual amount of organizational turbulence even by Raiders standards.
He was a three-sport athlete in high school: football, basketball, baseball. The basketball background comes up in his footwork, at least according to Purdue coaches. He’s described consistently by people around him as calm, low-key, unbothered by the spotlight in a way that isn’t performance. Multiple Raiders reporters have called him “Captain Positivity” with enough consistency that it’s clearly earned rather than assigned.
The 2026 Roster Situation
The Raiders used the first overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft on Fernando Mendoza, the Indiana quarterback who led the Hoosiers to a 16-0 national championship season. They also signed Kirk Cousins in free agency. That leaves O’Connell as the third quarterback on a roster where the first two are a proven veteran and the most hyped quarterback prospect in years.
There was draft-week speculation about trading him. Nothing happened. He’s in the final year of his rookie contract at a cap number of $3.801 million ($3.674 million base salary, $127,345 signing bonus). For a team that just spent the first overall pick on a quarterback who needs development time, having a 27-year-old veteran who has actually started NFL games – who knows what it feels like to lose to the Steelers and win in Kansas City – is genuinely useful. Cousins articulated this himself. General manager John Spytek said Mendoza “knows that the guys in that room, Kirk and Aidan, have played a lot of good football in this league and I’m sure he’ll learn a lot from them.”
Silver and Black Pride and other Raiders-specific outlets have noted that O’Connell could still be traded if a team loses a backup to injury before the season. A sixth or seventh-round pick is the realistic return. He may never start another NFL game. He may start four of them if Cousins misses time. That uncertainty has followed him since 2023 and he’s navigated it without visible damage to his demeanor.
His debut against the Chiefs in Week 18 of 2025 – 102 yards, no turnovers, a win – was the kind of final chapter for a difficult year that doesn’t get replicated on command. He’ll carry that into a quarterback room with two players who need different things from him, and based on three years of evidence, he’ll handle that without complaint.
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