Sweet victory: QB Derek Carr, left, exults after the Raiders’ 35-32 win over Carolina.
Carr didn’t feel blue after hurting pinkie, rallies team to 5th straight
The crowd gave Jack Del Rio the OK.
The Raiders’ head coach didn’t know the results of Derek Carr’s X-ray until the Coliseum roared when the quarterback ran back to the field from the locker room in the third quarter. His pinkie was jammed, not broken, and Carr went back in after missing just one series to lead Oakland to a 35-32 win over Carolina on Sunday afternoon.
Quarterbacks coach Todd Downing told Carr this was his “Willis Reed moment” when he went back in. (Carr played dumb and said “Who?”)
Linebacker Bruce Irvin went one, or one billion, better when he said, “it was like Jesus rose from the dead.”
The Raiders (9-2) certainly have found religion this season, or they simply have forgotten how to lose.
The Panthers rolled off 25 straight points after Carr went down a minute into the third quarter, as that little, right pinkie flipped the momentum in a game that the Raiders had dominated and led 24-7 at halftime.
Carr then led Oakland to 11
“He’s in a class of his own. I’m not saying he’s better than everybody … (but) I think he is.” Derek Carr, Raiders quarterback, on defensive end Khalil Mack
points in the final 8:37 to secure the team’s fifth straight win and make it 2-0 in November against the two participants from last season’s Super Bowl.
Oakland had tied the game 32-32 with 8:37 left on Carr’s 12-yard pass to Clive Walford and two-point-conversion completion to Seth Roberts.
Sebastian Janikowski hit the game-winning 23-yard field goal with 1:45 left, after a glovewearing Carr found Michael Crabtree for catches of 49 and 15 yards.
“I would love to win by more points,” Carr said.
This was the Raiders’ fifth fourth-quarter comeback of the season and the loss might have ended the postseason hopes for Cam Newton and the Panthers, now 4-7.
“Just proud of our guys for hanging in there and finding a way,” Del Rio said. “That’s been the theme for us this year.”
Find a way and make a play. When the defense took the field after Janikowski’s kick, Carr said he told defensive end Khalil Mack to “go end the game.” Mack said, “OK.”
Carolina got to the Raiders’ 44, but Mack put the game on ice with a sack of Newton on 4th-and-10. It was Mack’s sixth straight game with a sack, and it wasn’t even his best play of the day. In the second quarter, he picked off a Newton pass and ran it back 6 yards for a touchdown and a 24-7 lead with 59 seconds left in the half.
Mack became the first NFL player since Charles Woodson to have a sack, interception, touchdown, forced fumble and fumble recovery in a game.
“He is in a class of his own,” Carr said. “I’m not saying he’s better than everybody else … (but) I think he is.”
The crowd was having a party after Mack scored, but that ended abruptly when Carr injured his pinkie on a botched snap and fumble less than a minute into the third quarter. Carr missed only one series, but Carolina — perhaps sensing the Raiders having been weakened — scored four straight touchdowns to seemingly take control of the game.
When Carr got hurt, Newton got hot. After Jonathan Stewart scored on the possession started by the Carr fumble, Newton hit Ted Ginn on an 88-yard receptionto make it 24-19 (the two-point-conversion pass failed). Carr’s fifth interception of the season added to the stunning reversal, which continued when Stewart scored his second touchdown to make it 25-24 (before another failed two-point try).
It looked like the issue was slipping out of reach when, on the fourth play of the fourth quarter, Newton threw a 44yard pass to the end zone and watched as Kelvin Benjamin posted up cornerback Sean Smith and grabbed it as Carolina stretched its lead to 32-24.
On the sideline, Carr was grinning.
“The mood was, “Hey, we’ve been here before,’ ” Carr said. “We don’t like that we’ve been here before, but there was no doubt in our minds that we could move the ball, score and win. There’s never a doubt.
“You clap your hands. We have to go.”
The Raiders win by reflex now, just as they had six days earlier in another country when they had to come from behind. Like that win over the Texans in Mexico, the Raiders took advantage of mistakes.
Benjamin inexplicably ran out of bounds a yard shy of a first down on 3rd-and-10 to set up Carr and Crabtree’s connections. Then, when the Panthers got the ball back, they were late getting in a play and had to burn their last timeout with 1:05 left — after an incomplete pass.
Carr played the second half in the shotgun formation, as it was too painful to take a traditional snap from center. He nevertheless said he was “good to go” and didn’t wear anything on his hand at the postgame news conference.
Carolina head coach Ron Rivera, who grew up a Raiders fan, was impressed.
“He’s very cool, calm, collected,” Rivera said. “You can see that his teammates have a passion for him . ... They’ve got something going on very nice here.”