POLARIZING QB
Buzzards are circling above Raiders’ Derek Carr, and it won’t stop any time soon
ALAMEDA » With a four-game losing streak in a season that saw the Raiders’ playoff dreams go from hope to desperation, the buzzards are circling around Derek Carr.
It goes with the territory of being a quarterback. Credit and plaudits for the wins, blame and boos for the losses. Carr knows both sides, and knows them well.
Few scenes demonstrated how polarizing Carr has become to the fan base than his postgame visit Sunday to the Black Hole after a 20-16 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Fans cheering, even more booing, and Carr helping a young child escape from a potentially frightening scene in the front row.
All the early conjecture about Carr being too thinskinned and not having the kind of competitive fire coach Jon Gruden prefers had faded when the Raiders were 6- 4. Now that they’re 6-8 with the Chargers and Broncos to go, it’s back with a vengeance.
Former Raiders exec and longtime NFL personnel man Mike Lombardi wrote in The Athletic about a “serious disconnect” between Carr and Gruden, mostly citing the reasons above.
Gruden loves Rich Gannon. Carr is not
Gannon. Therefore, as the theory goes, there’s no guarantee Carr will be the man when the Raiders move to Las Vegas.
So I asked Gruden on Wednesday if he felt as good about Carr as he did at the beginning of the season. Gruden didn’t offer a full vote of confidence, but stuck by Carr as he has since his arrival.
“I feel good about a lot of things. I’m not going to sit here and have a season-ending
press conference,” Gruden said. “We’ve got a lot to do yet. He’s done a lot of good things in some tough circumstances.
“We don’t see the ball a lot in the second half if you want to do the math on that. We don’t get a lot of possessions, but we’ve got to do better, he’s got to do better, I’ve got to do better and we’ve got to do better.”
Funny thing was, at one of the most crucial points in the loss the Jacksonville, Carr looked quite a bit like Gannon.
On second-and-9 from the Jacksonville 43, Carr correctly read a run-pass option, faked a handoff to Josh Jacobs, then ran 12 yards for a first down, giving himself up with a perfect slide well before the boundary. As if he’d done it a hundred times before.
Gannon’s freelancing and ability to measure off first downs with scrambles was a skill Gruden loved and still covets. He has been urging Carr to use his legs since his arrival in 2018. Carr is athletic and mobile, but has seldom looked like a fluid and natural runner.
And yet, there it was for all to see. A decisive, game-changing run. The officials blew it and ruled Carr out of bounds. The Raiders lost. The NFL apologized. Gruden may never get over it. Once again Wednesday he made it clear there was no excuse for the mistake before moving on to address Carr’s sudden discovery in terms of mobility.
“It was a breakthrough play in some ways,” Gruden said. “It was a run- option. He’s going to hand the ball to Josh or keep it himself. He chooses to keep it in a critical situation and potentially it could have been a big play in the game. It was a big play for him.”
Carr acknowledged the play wasn’t necessarily in his comfort zone in terms of familiarity.
“We don’t run many zone-reads where I’m just a runner,” Carr said. “That play was a fun one. To end the game like that would have been awesome. Two-minute warning, we take the clock down, hopefully get a first down. Game over, we’re all high-fiving and it feels different. But that wasn’t the case and at least they said ‘sorry.’”
Carr, one of the least sarcastic athletes I’ve ever covered, was being sarcastic, in case you’re wondering.
As the quarterback, it’s up to Carr to take the pulse of the locker room and be a leader. He has no intention of doing it in the style of Gannon, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Russell Wilson or any other quarterback you care to name.
Rather than start reading teammates the riot act and demanding more, Carr covets consistency of approach. Carr will be Carr. Teammates would see through anything else.
“Some guys, it looks like their dog got kicked because they’re human,” Carr said. “It’s hard to go through this business when you’re not winning as many games as you want to and everybody is talking about crazy stuff.
“You’ve got to make sure you do your best as a player or a coach to come in every day and be the same person no matter the circumstance. I hope that people that were around when we were winning 12 games would say I act the same way then as I do now.”
Chances are the Carr speculation will continue for weeks, maybe months, after the season concludes. He’s got three years left on his contract. The way it works in the NFL, the deal that briefly made him the highestpaid quarterback in the NFL is now pretty reasonable. The Raiders can get out of it with just $5 million in dead money under the salary cap if he were to be traded.
There is nonsense galore where Gruden is concerned, and plenty of time for unsubstantiated stories where insiders claim he has “fallen in love” with either an available veteran quarterback or college draft pick. Look no further than last year’s supposed love affairs with Kyler Murray and Dwayne Haskins for proof.
Gruden already puts forth some 18 hours a day or more into Raiders football, so it’s not as if he’s been forsaking his own offense so he can load video of Trevor Lawrence, Tua Tagavaiola or Justin Herbert.
There’s still time for all that once the season is over.
Carr may wind up where he is now, the starting quarterback for the Las Vegas Raiders, with a young gun to push him.
Then it will start all over again.