Do coaches make quarterbacks look better or do quarterbacks make coaches look better? Depending on the quarterback and the coach, either can be true. And therefore it becomes somewhat of an open question if neither the coach nor the quarterback is well established.
So, over the nine years Derek Carr was with the Raiders, the argument persisted. Because at no point did either the coach or the quarterback establish himself.
Typically speaking, the best approach is accountability. The idea of which, Derek Carr preaches, but when given the opportunity to put it into practice, he has a bad habit of shifting the blame.
“If you win more games and you keep being productive, you stay there forever,” Carr told the Fresno Bee. “But we didn’t win enough games and that’s the kind of stuff that happens with all the turnover of coaches; with all the different things. Eventually, the last guy in the room is usually going to be out at some point. And that’s really what happened. I’ve survived about 20 coaches and that’s how it goes and it is what it is.”
He “survived” all the “turnover of coaches”? Well, I suppose it’s good he said “keep being productive” because that’s at least getting in the neighborhood of responsibility. Even though the word “keep” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Let’s look at the “turnover of coaches.”
The Raiders did have some turnover of coaches. This is true. It wasn’t 20 coaches, unless maybe if you add offensive coordinators and QB coaches to the figure. He also had just two head coaches over six of the past eight years. Which is not that bad.
Carr’s first coach was already in place before him. That would be Dennis Allen; his new head coach in New Orleans. Their time together in Oakland lasted four games before Allen was fired and Tony Sparano took over as interim head coach.
For all intents and purposes, Jack Del Rio was the first head coach hired during the Derek Carr era. Del Rio was hired after Carr’s first season. Carr had his lone outstanding season in his second year under Del Rio in 2016.
Carr would struggle the next year and Mark Davis sought an offensive head coach to try and get the most out of Carr. That’s how offensive guru Jon Gruden returned to the sideline.
The funny thing is, it was the “turnover of coaches” when Gruden resigned and Bisaccia took over as interim head coach that seemed to lead to the only other playoff season of Carr’s career. So, maybe turnover isn’t necessarily a bad thing?
After that season, Davis turned to another offensive minded head coach, hiring Josh McDaniels. And Carr’s play once again dropped off.
So, Carr dropped off after one good season under Del Rio, never sniffed the playoffs in three full seasons under Gruden, and took another step back under McDaniels. At some point you have to recognize the one constant here; that until McDaniels, none of Carr’s head coaches could “survive” *him*.
Which leads me to the word “keep” in “keep being productive”.
Productive is a relative term. But there are comparisons to grade how productive a player is in his career.
For instance, Carr averaged right about 24 touchdowns per season over nine seasons. And he has long had issues with scoring in the red zone.
It’s also been eight years since he threw for more than 28 touchdowns. And he did that just once in his career — when he thew for 32 TD’s in 2015.
For comparison, six quarterbacks threw for more than 28 TD’s last season alone. Nine QB’s did it in 2021 and ten in 2020. You get the picture.
That wouldn’t matter as much if Carr was leading the Raiders on playoff runs. He wasn’t doing that either. He won precisely zero playoff games in a Raiders uniform.
But don’t tell that to Carr, he still feeds into the notion that his franchise records should’ve earned him unquestioned loyalty.
“I was very upset; I was mad,” Carr said of his benching for the final two games of last season. “You spend nine years in a place, you have all the records and you can play at a high level and for something to get in the way, whether it was whatever reason, money related or whatever, injury related, I would have said I don’t even want the money, just to play two more times in front of our fans. I didn’t get that opportunity. So it definitely lit a fire inside me to keep going.”
It’s not nearly as simple as Carr tries to make it out to be. It wasn’t about whether he was paid or not, it was about the risk involved with him taking the field. Should he have been injured, it would have guaranteed the rest of his contract. Once the Raiders were out of the playoff race and knew they would be moving on from Carr, it would have been one of the dumbest business decisions in history to let him play.
As it stands, they still had to cut him with nothing in return because Carr refused a trade to the team he would ultimately sign with as a free agent.
Carr got his feelings hurt and used that as a reason to do what we all knew he would do back when he claimed he would retire before playing for another team — he wanted to play for another team.
And if his hurt feelings weren’t enough, he used his wife’s empathy to justify it.
“Once they made my wife cry, that was pretty much over,” he said. “Once they made her cry, that was out. But the love for my teammates is what probably would have made me do it. But the way it worked out and the timing of things, I was just … it was time for me to move on. But who knows? You never know what will happen.”
I think he changed his stance about five times in that statement. He was done with the Raiders. But would’ve stayed for the sake of his teammates. To do what exactly? Play for an organization he now suddenly hated for making a business decision after he had professed undying love for years and would rather retire than play anywhere else? I’m dizzy.
Yeah, it was time to move on. Past time, it would seem.
