I’d talked with a couple people with connections to the program whose opinions I respect who had watched a few spring practices. They confirmed he’d hit the ground running and that, yeah, he’s who everyone thought he was during a well-publicized recruitment.
But I wasn’t going to disclose those things. I didn’t want to fuel the hype train. My scouting report on him in February already bordered on instigative.
Part of me had wanted him to have an underwhelming spring game on April 27th so that expectations wouldn’t take on a life of their own before the kid could even get to fall camp.
Welp, so much for that idea. Raiola caught national attention when he went out and threw for 239 yards and two touchdowns, hitting on 16 of his 22 throws while completing passes to over a dozen different receivers.
Like I said, I’m actually trying to temper expectations, so it’s not lost on me that he did it while wearing a green no-contact jersey, going against a defense missing several key members and facing a scheme that was so vanilla that Ben & Jerry’s are interested in buying the recipe.
At the same time, you can’t dismiss what he put on tape. He showed off his elite arm talent, distributing the ball to all three levels. He threw with touch, he threw receivers open and when he needed to he drilled passes between defenders.
