The Raiders have announced the placement of injured quarterback Aidan O’Connell on injured reserve. The transaction comes a day after many thought it would. 
Each NFL team is allotted two players that it can place on injured reserve before the roster cut deadline with a designation to return, allowing them to be activated to the 53-man roster four weeks after the start of the regular season. Any other players placed on IR before the deadline will remain on IR for the entire year.
When news came out two days before the deadline that O’Connell was expected to miss six to eight weeks with a fractured wrist, it was expected that he would be one of the two for Las Vegas. It came as a bit of a shock when the team only placed one player — safety Lonnie Johnson — on IR with a designation to return, keeping an injured O’Connell on the 53-man roster and giving the team one less spot to keep a borderline player.
Instead, it appears they wanted to reserve a spot on the 53-man roster for a player outside the building. None of the players they waived appear to have been claimed elsewhere, so all are available if the team wanted to bring them back. The team chose, instead, to claim linebacker Brennan Jackson, who was waived yesterday by the Rams; the team also did an add-drop of two linemen. Still, the Raiders knew O’Connell was headed to IR, so when they claimed a new player, it was an easy transaction to bring them on and move O’Connell off.
Gonna be a long season in Vegas