Silver Minings: Anthony Richardson’s visit with Raiders gets positive reviews

It’s hard to put too much weight into Top 30 visits as the Las Vegas Raiders, and the 31 other teams in the league, are really just doing their due diligence on NFL Draft prospects and it is smokescreen season.

However, everyone knows the Raiders are looking for a quarterback to mold and develop once Jimmy Garoppolo’s tenure with the team is over, so Florida quarterback Anthony Richardson’s visit to Las Vegas is a little more intriguing and newsworthy than most.

According to ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler, Richardson met with the Raiders’ brass and the meeting went well as Fowler explained via quotes gathered from Bleacher Report:

“I was told he was in their building in Vegas [Friday]. They went and probably had a sensible meal, had a nice dinner with Raiders’ brass,” Fowler said on SportsCenter. “They also put him on the big board to work out plays and test his mental approach to the game. I’m told the meeting by all accounts went very well.

“And so, this is a quarterback who doesn’t know where he’s going to go yet; probably will know closer to the draft. But his stock is surging because a lot of teams I’ve talked to believe he’s in that top tier,” Fowler said. “You see Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud, but he’s right there based on that enormous upside.

“The Raiders are looking hard at all the quarterbacks, but they have a lot of needs as I was told, so they’re not going to stretch the issue too much and just sell out for a quarterback just yet. We’ll see, it’d have to be the right opportunity.”

General manager Dave Ziegler and head coach Josh McDaniels will likely have to trade up to get the Gator, especially if he’s as highly regarded throughout the league as Fowler states. But there’s a good amount of time between now and draft day so anything can happen.

In other Raiders links:

• Defensive players to watch: Bucky Brooks and Rhett Lewis give Raider Nation a handful of names in the draft to look into on their Raiders.com podcast.
• Raiders free agency by the numbers: Raiders digital team reporter Levi Edwards makes his case in how the Silver and Black “reloaded” in free agency.
• Devon Witherspoon or Will Levis?: The second edition of S&BP’s NFL Draft This or That series makes Raider Nation pick between a quarterback of the future and a potential shutdown corner.
• Finding defensive starters: a look at how the Raiders can find defensive starters in the first three rounds of the draft and at all three levels of the defense.