Terrelle Pryor responds to agent’s comments about Raiders’ starting offer

Pryor apologized for comments made by his agent on Monday that suggested Raiders head coach Dennis Allen was hoping the quarterback would fail in the team’s season finale.

by Adam Stites

Dec 24, 2013, 1:58 PM UTC

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Oakland Raiders quarterback Terrelle Pryor apologized for comments made by his agent on Monday about the team's head coach Dennis Allen.

Pryor's agent Jerome Stanley told Scott Bair of CSN Bay Area that he believes Allen is intentionally setting up the third-year passer to fail in his return to the starting lineup as a way to validate Matt McGloin starting for five weeks:

“You have to understand the coach is putting him in, he doesn’t want him to look good. And you can write that. He doesn’t want him to look good because, if he looks good this week, it makes the past five weeks look like a bad decision. (Allen) doesn’t want him to look good, he wants him to look bad. That is what is going on.”

Pryor, 24, has started eight games for the Raiders in 2013 and accumulated a 66.0 passer rating with five touchdowns and 11 interceptions. After a hot start to the year, Pryor's play dropped off before he suffered a knee injury in November that sent him to the sidelines. He remained there behind McGloin for five weeks, but was announced by Allen as the starter for the team's season finale against the Broncos.

While Stanley doesn’t believe Pryor is being reinserted into the starting lineup for the correct reasons, Levi Damien of SB Nation’s Raider blog, Silver and Black Pride, called the comments “ridiculous” and doesn’t think the agent is helping his client by talking:

I get that agents are supposed to say things like their client is “the best and most dynamic athlete in the NFL,” but Stanley isn’t doing any favors to Pryor by making these statements.
Pryor was already having to answer questions he’d rather he didn’t have to answer. Now he has to field a whole new set of questions and deal with the repercussions of his agent’s brain-mouth disconnect. Now, if Stanley is intentionally trying to get his client out of Oakland, that’s another story. In that case, he’s doing a tremendous job.

Pryor didn’t wait long to issue an apology for his agent’s comments, posting a statement on Twitter late Monday night on the West Coast. In the short statement, Pryor said that he is “thankful for the opportunity” to start and that Stanley’s comments are “not what [he’s] about.”

In Oakland’s first game against the Broncos, Pryor completed 19-of-28 passes for 281 yards with one touchdown and no interceptions. Kickoff on Sunday is scheduled for 4:25 p.m. ET at O.co Coliseum in Oakland.