Raiders’ Derek Carr winks to critics
Saints’ Brees prototype for what Coach Gruden, Raiders want from Carr
The Las Vegas Raiders got everything they wanted and more out of Derek Carr in Week 1.
The Las Vegas Raiders got everything they wanted out of Derek Carr in Week 1. He was efficient, avoided sacks and interceptions and spread the ball to nine different receivers.
More than that, Carr was at one with coach Jon Gruden, operating as the CEO quarterback and ball distributor the Raiders head coach hasn’t had since Rich Gannon from 1999 through 2001.
In other words, Carr looked at
least a little like Drew Brees, and that is no accident.
“We model a lot of what we do as quarterbacks based on what he does,” Carr said Wednesday in a Zoom interview. “He’d rather throw a completion than throw a 40-yard pass for an incompletion. And he has a Super Bowl ring, so he doesn’t care much about it. So I love his game. He keeps the ball moving. He’s efficient. They stay on schedule.”
Brees, meanwhile, looked almost mortal at age 41 in the Saints’ 3423 season-opening win against Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He was 18 of 30 for 160 yards and a pair of touchdowns. Brees threw a pair of touchdown passes, was sacked once and did not throw an interception.
It was a performance that in Brees’ estimation was “awful,” as the Saints visit the Raiders Monday night in Allegiant Stadium.
It says something about the standard Brees has set when an 11-point win draws such harsh self-criticism, and it’s a level and style of play Carr has aspired to. His remark about Brees taking what he can get in terms of completions at the expense of throwing recklessly downfield was a not-so-thinly veiled jab at the Carr critics who remain convinced he’ll al
ways come up short.
Carr was born seven years after Ken Stabler retired but was a fan anyway because he’d heard stories from his father. Later, Carr wore No. 4 because of Brett Favre, the Green Bay “gunslinger” who like Stabler wasn’t averse to taking chances both in life and football.
Brees, the NFL’s all-time leader in most every passing statistic that matters, better fits what Carr wants to be at age 29 both on and off the field. In addition to their passing preferences, Brees, like Carr, is Christian and family oriented.
The union between Brees and coach Sean Payton almost didn’t happen. A free agent in 2006, Brees was coming off extensive shoulder surgery and was in talks with the Miami Dolphins. Miami instead signed Daunte Culpepper.
Brees signed with New Orleans, where Payton was a rookie head coach.
Brees and Payton have been together ever since, and in a football sense are like football’s longest running married couple, able to finish each other’s sentences in a football sense in a way Carr and Gruden are experiencing in Year 3.
The Saints will be without All-Pro wide receiver Michael Thomas, who set an NFL record last season with 149 receptions but is
out indefinitely with a high ankle sprain. So Brees will adjust accordingly.
“My job is to put everybody in the best position to succeed so that we as an offense can succeed,” Brees told reporters in New Orleans. “We’re asking guys to do certain things, fill certain roles. I think constant communication, the ability to pull them aside, talk to them, so they have a level of confidence and I have a level of trust and confidence, makes it so when we get out there on game day we feel like it’s going to be automatic.”
A week after Carolina’s Teddy Bridgewater gave the Raiders’ defense trouble running an offense he’s just beginning to understand, here comes Brees at the
height of his mental powers.
“A lot of guys, they get a little bit older, they lose a little bit of interest in it. Perhaps they don’t relate to the young crowd like they used to,” Gruden said during a Zoom teleconference Thursday. “It’s just amazing the effort he continues to put into it. He sacrifices more than people realize. And he’s one of the top four, top five competitors I’ve ever met in my life.”
At 6-foot, 209 pounds, Brees is the sport’s premier distributor of the ball, lethally accurate on shortand medium-range throws with a nice touch on the occasional deep ball. At this point in his career, his mind is like a computer which Payton has been programming for 14 years.