Raiders' Plan for McGloin, Pryor to Share Time Can be Dicey

At Penn State, McGloin went through a similar situation and once said it can be "a killer to a team"

When Matt McGloin was a quarterback at Penn State, he worked for everything he got.

He was an unheralded walk-on, but then climbed through the ranks to earn a starting spot. Eventually, he set the Nittany Lions records for career touchdown passes and 300-yard games.

But even in achieving success at Penn State, McGloin was at times frustrated. At one point, he was part of a rotating quarterback duo with Rob Bolden in his sophomore and junior seasons, and wasn’t fond of it.

In a 2012 interview with StateCollege.com, McGloin – who became the team’s sole starter at the position as a senior – admitted his frustration at sharing time.

“It’s a killer to a team, in my opinion,” McGloin said as a senior. “You have to have a clear-cut starter. The team has to believe in the quarterback. That wasn’t the case the last two years. If the (coaches) had put their trust into one guy, we might have been more successful.”

Which means one thing: The Raiders rookie quarterback probably isn’t all that excited about sharing playing time with Terrelle Pryor over the final three games of this 2013 season.

A Pryor injury paved the way for McGloin to start four games ago, and McGloin has now become the No. 1 quarterback. Over that span, McGloin has livened up the Oakland passing game, but the Raiders have gone 1-3 – certainly not totally the fault of the quarterback, though he’s made some costly mistakes.

But the Raiders also want to see a little bit more of Pryor over the remainder of the season to have a better idea of what they have going into the offseason.

In last week’s 37-27 loss to the Jets, head coach Dennis Allen inserted Pryor at quarterback for the team’s third series. Pryor then led the Raiders on a 58-yard drive that produced a field goal. Giving Pryor playing time was part of Allen’s plan going into the game, and McGloin was aware of it.

After Pryor’s series, McGloin returned and played the rest of the game.

McGloin struggled after returning to the game, causing some to wonder if his rhythm had been disrupted. Others – including former Raiders coach Tom Flores, in the radio booth -- suggested Pryor deserved to stay in the game.

But McGloin had a better second half – leading Oakland to three TDs and a field goal – and finished the day 18-of-31 for 245 yards, two TD passes, an interception and a quarterback rating of 91.5.

Based on his past experience at Penn State, McGloin probably wasn’t happy with the Pryor arrangement. But he didn’t say that.

“Anytime you have quarterbacks coming in and out, especially in cold weather, it gets difficult sometimes,” McGloin told the media Sunday. “But it’s not an excuse or anything like that for the way we played.”

Allen, meanwhile, has stressed that Pryor will continue to get more chances, including in this Sunday’s afternoon game vs. the Chiefs at O.co Coliseum.

“That’s something that we’ll gameplan on a week in and week out basis, where we can use him and how we can use him,” Allen told Paul Gutierrez of ESPN.com. “Matt’s obviously going to be the starting quarterback in this game and we’ll look at each gameplan and see how we can use Terrelle and what skills we can use to take advantage of what the defense is doing.”

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