Carr faces big challenge in K.C.
Derek Carr said he was sick of losing following a Week 4 loss to Buffalo. Next up is a venue where losing is the only thing he knows.
Six times Carr has led the Raiders into Arrowhead Stadium. Six times he has played poorly. Six times the Raiders have lost.
The circumstances surrounding Sunday’s game in Kansas City against the defending Super Bowl champions are different, but the mission is the same. If Carr wants to put his name alongside established Raiders quarterbacks for something other than a high completion percentage, he must win on the road against their most- longstanding rival.
He knows it, too.
“If we’re being honest, to make a rivalry we have to win some games,” Carr said Wednesday during a video teleconference.
At the very least, Carr needs to play well in Kansas City. The Chiefs under Andy Reid have had the better team, and usually by a considerable margin. But Carr has yet to elevate the play of the Raiders in one of the NFL’s most famously hostile environments.
Twice the Raiders have gone into Arrowhead with
winning records with Carr at quarterback. They were 6- 5 last Dec. 1 while the Chiefs were 7- 4. Carr had a miserable first half, which included a 46-yard interception return for a touchdown by Juan Thornhill to give Kansas City a 21- 0 lead before halftime. The Chiefs basically sat on the Raiders the rest of the way, winning 40-9, with Carr adding to his stat line with a 14-for-18, 121-yard second half.
In 2016, the Raiders under Jack Del Rio were 10-2 and the Chiefs 9- 3. Carr was 17 of 41 for 117 yards, and had one potentially game- changing deep pass intended for Amari Cooper flutter harmlessly to Earth. Did the ball hit an overhead camera wire? Who knows?
Or as Carr himself would say in one of his favorite lines of late, “Nobody cares.”
What is known are Carr’s six- game Arrowhead Stadium totals: A 55.6% completion rate (130 of 254) for 1,151 yards, four touchdowns and seven interceptions. A passer rating of 63.2. He’s absorbed 14 sacks and fumbled six times, losing two.
The average margin of defeat for the Raiders in those six games is just less than 17 points. The Raiders haven’t scored more than 17 in any of them.
Ken Stabler, who Carr passed as the all- time leader for franchise touchdown passes, won at Arrowhead. So did Jim Plunkett. Rich Gannon, a former Chief, was 3-1 at his previous residence. The last Raiders quarterback to win there was Carson Palmer in 2012, against a Chiefs team that finished 2-14.
Heck, even JaMarcus Russell won two starts at Arrowhead, albeit in games when he didn’t play very well and the Chiefs were not very good.
Such comparisons will be a yearly occurrence until Carr successfully scales Mount Arrowhead.
“Derek’s going to hear it until we do it,” coach Jon Gruden said. “But, he’s the biggest reason I think we have a chance to do it. We have to play better around him.”
Working in Carr’s favor is the environment which has tortured him since 2014 will be different. Instead of a full house of 73,000-plus at a facility that ranks with Seattle’s CenturyLink Field as the NFL’s loudest outdoor facility, there will be between 12,000 and 13,000 fans.
Second, it will be much warmer. Temperatures may be as high as the mid-80s. Every other time Carr has played in Arrowhead it’s been Dec. 1 or later, and for his career Carr is 2-10 when it is below 50 degrees and 0- 6 when it’s below 40.
Yet it’s still a tall order. The Chiefs are 4- 0 and look as good as they did a year ago when they won the Super Bowl. On defense, they’re even better. The Raiders injury list Wednesday listed 19 players.
“We need to get a win there. But it comes with a cost of playing the defending Super Bowl champs, who are hot again,” Carr said. “Great opportunity for us. I prepare for every game the same no matter who I’m playing, I’ve always treated it that way. I know that we haven’t won in a while. The awesome thing about sports and football is you get another chance at it.”
Carr is 2- 10 overall against the Chiefs, having won a pair of games at the Coliseum — including his first NFL win in 2014.
Gruden’s breakthrough game as a head coach was a 41-38 overtime win at Arrowhead at the close of the 1999 season to knock the Chiefs out of the playoffs. He’s lost to Kansas City four times since his return in 2018 and has identified the problem.
“We can’t turn the ball over,” Gruden said. “If you look at the turnover ratio in the four games since I’ve been back coaching against Kansas City, it’s almost embarrassing.”
The Raiders are a minus-9 in turnover margin in those games, which brings us back to Carr, who has six interceptions and a lost fumble. Besides the interception return for a touchdown to Thornhill, there was a 54-yard pick- six by Daniel Sorenson in a 35-3 loss in 2018.
And here we are again, at Carr’s House of Pain.
“I think Derek would certainly benefit from a big win like this, but so would we all,” Gruden said.
One player needs it more than anyone else. His legacy as a Raiders quarterback may depend on it.