Carr has grown despite setback
Oakland to miss playoffs, but QB remains upbeat
Derek Carr added a wrinkle to his weekly routine this season, a short window on the days after games in which the Raiders’ quarterback sits down in a room in his home, pulls up YouTube and speaks directly to fans about football and their questions.
Carr did not hold his customary chat after the loss to the Cowboys a week ago Sunday. He said he tried, but his phone wasn’t working.
As setbacks go, it was relatively minor in the scope of Carr’s past year. Before suffering a broken fibula a year ago on Christmas Eve, Carr was an MVP candidate for a playoff-bound team. He signed a five-year, $125 million contract over the offseason that briefly made him the league’s highest-paid player, but he has not replicated his 2016 success in the first season of that deal.
Carr arrived in Philadelphia for Monday night’s game on pace for fewer passing yards
and touchdowns than he had last season, already with more interceptions and leading a team that was eliminated from playoff contention Sunday when Kansas City beat Miami.
The effect has been to test a quality Carr rarely had to show last year: how he responds to losing.
Asked last week about his struggles, Carr invoked a memory from his rookie season, following a game against the Seahawks in which the Raiders fell to 0-8 on their way to an 0-10 start.
“Somebody asked me — I think they were from Seattle — ‘Is this season ruining you?’ ” Carr said. “I said, ‘Not if I know who I am.’ ”
Carr’s YouTube chats have offered an added glimpse, if not entirely unfiltered. It’s not clear how much of the criticism being leveled at Carr — for his play, his contract and the Raiders’ record — reaches him in the sessions. Carr starts each by recapping the previous game, then selects a few questions from fans that he wants to answer. The tone of the videos is typically positive.
Following the Raiders’ first loss this season, in prime time at Washington in Week 3, Carr’s first words into his camera were: “Yes, we will absolutely bounce back.” In fact, it was the first of four consecutive losses, a game that general manager Reggie McKenzie acknowledged “shook all of us” in the organization.
After the Raiders’ Week 14 loss at Kansas City, a consequential game in the division, Carr said there was “no one more disappointed than myself with how our team played.” Then he added: “We have to be better, we will be better. These tough times, they’re not going to be forever. I can promise you that.”
Carr is naturally upbeat, especially with the media, which is what made his news conference after the Kansas City loss notable. Carr was clearly upset, his answers terse, his tone clipped. He said the loss “sucked,” then told reporters: “You can put it all on me.”
Asked last week where Carr has improved this season, offensive coordinator Todd Downing pointed to Carr’s “leadership.”
“People talk about how he’s a good guy and he’s high character and all of that, but he demands a lot out of those around him,” Downing said. “For him this year, watching him develop leadership in the toughest of times, watching him take accountability in the toughest of times — it’s not something that surprises me, because I’ve known him for a while now. But it was certainly good to see.”
Carr last week was named the Raiders’ winner of the Ed Block Courage Award, given to a player on each team for sportsmanship and overcom“Even ing adversity, often an injury. Teammates vote on the award.
After leading seven fourthquarter comebacks a year ago, Carr has one this season (Week 7 against the Chiefs). The offense that ranked sixth in total yardage last season has slipped to 19th, the Raiders’ scoring down from 26 points per game to 20.1.
Aside from one game missed because of a lower back fracture, Carr has been under center for all of it. “We just haven’t executed at a high level as a team,” he said. “But (individually), there are definitely decisions and things that can be made that would be better for our team.”
Head coach Jack Del Rio has been critical of his quarterback at times this year, but said he thought Carr played with familiar “zest” against the Cowboys and is “growing” in his fourth season.
the very elite quarterbacks of all time weren’t perfect every year,” Del Rio said. “Derek is a good football player. We’re going to win a lot of games together here.”
It has not happened this season to the extent Carr or the Raiders would have liked. With two games left, though, Carr’s optimism remains intact.
“There have been things I’ve gone through this year that I’ve never been through,” Carr said. “I’m learning to deal with those things and not just deal with them, but execute them at a high level.
“I think that going forward, I’ll definitely be a better player.”