The last time we saw Derek Carr, he was writhing in pain and clutching at his lower back after his final pass against the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday night. Then he got up slowly, was walked to the blue medical tent on the New Orleans Saints sideline, and then escorted to the locker room for further evaluation. So how was he feeling after the game?
“Not good,” Carr replied, “We’ll get an MRI and all that kind of stuff tomorrow, and figure it out.”
Carr said he wasn’t functional — not able to move and throw how he needed to, and that there wasn’t time for the team medical staff to treat him with just minutes left in regulation. So he’ll travel back to New Orleans and undergo testing to get a better idea of what’s ailing him after a night’s rest.
But it wasn’t a hard collision that hurt him. Carr said an awkward windup to throw was when he first noticed something was off: “It wasn’t even the hit, honestly. Just when I dropped back, and torqued to throw that ball to (Mason Tipton), that’s when I felt it.”
The Saints announced his injury as an oblique issue, and those have been a problem for them before. Marshon Lattimore missed most of training camp dealing with it. Drew Brees had it flare up a couple of times over the years, too. There’s certainly a possibility it could keep Carr from playing next week against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
If that’s the case, everything the Saints have done and said suggests it would be Jake Haener starting next Sunday, not Spencer Rattler. But we’ll just have to wait for an update once Carr has had the opportunity to go through a thorough evaluation. The only certainty is that the Saints offensive line can’t do as poor a job protecting their quarterback as they did Monday night and expect to win.
