No doubt season depends on Carr
OAKLAND >> No, it wasn’t a true West Coast offense. It wasn’t a modern spread scheme either.
What John Gruden debuted Monday night was something a bit different — a wonderful marriage between the two systems, created over the last nine years in a Tampa strip mall.
Let’s call it the Spread Coast offense.
And after nine months — or nine years, depending on how you look at it — it was worth the wait for Raiders fans.
Gruden’s scheme was trustworthy — creative but sound, reliable but unpredictable.
His quarterback, on the other hand, was anything but trustworthy in the Raiders’ 33-13 loss to the Rams.
Carr’s three-interception performance Monday handed the Rams a win and the Raiders their first loss of the season. It was certainly an inauspicious start for a quarterback who is in a prove-it year.
I’ll give the Raiders this, though — they got straight to the point of the 2018 season in only one game.
Gruden has said that everything the Raiders do revolves around Derek Carr.
There’s no doubt about that now.
Carr looked like a superstar in the first half of Monday’s season debut — he completed 20 of 24 passes for 199 yards. The Carr of 2016 — the Carr that nearly won NFL MVP was back.
Then, in the second half, he looked like the Carr of 2017 — skittish in the pocket (even when real pressure wasn’t present), inaccurate, and flustered, and incompetent.
Which Carr will Raid-
ers get for the rest of the 2018 season? As a longtime Carr skeptic, I’d put my money on the latter option.
But as someone who was impressed by Gruden’s gameplan Monday, I will say that it’s important to wait and see. If Carr fails, I don’t think it will be for lack of coaching.
The same truth applies to Monday’s game.
Some will try to put the blame for the Raiders’ second half offensive stall — and, in turn, their loss — on Gruden. That’s not fair.
The Raider’s old/new head coach hardly called a perfect game, but the scheme he installed gave his team more than a fair chance to win.
Raiders fans have been waiting a lot longer than nine months for an offense like that.
But they might still be waiting on the right quarterback to make it all work.
It was an incredible fall from grace Monday — it appeared as if a new era of Raiders’ football had dawned on the team’s first offensive drive, when the Raiders drove down the field with a wonderfully orchestrated ballad of power and finesse that attacked the Rams at their weakest point to the tune of 75 yards and a 7-0 lead.
It featured the best of Derek Carr’s talent and the offensive tenets that Gruden holds so dear. There was heavy personnel — two tight ends and a fullback — that were quintessential Gruden. There were the five-wide looks that Carr thrived with in 2016, too.
The scheme didn’t change in the second half — Gruden was still scheming players open.
But Carr couldn’t find him and threw the game away in the process.
If that’s a trend that continues, don’t be surprised if Carr gets the Raiders head coach Jon Gruden talks to referees during a time out Monday.
hook — Gruden isn’t a man known for his patience, and even though Carr is the “franchise” quarterback on a $125 million deal, Gruden, with his massive contract, is really the franchise.
And if there’s one thing that Gruden has proven throughout his career, it’s that he will not be sabotaged by his quarterback.
He was certainly sabotaged Monday.
And I don’t think Gruden will be able to get two first-round picks in a trade for this player.
Now, do we know what the Raiders will be after one game? No. Week One reactions have created more fools than prophets.
But I do know this: the Raiders received a massive coaching upgrade this offseason.
We can debate if Gruden, the head coach, had his team prepared for Monday’s game — the Raiders took the NFL lead for penalty yards in the first 30 minutes of the game — and I still have no idea if he can build a viable NFL roster, as that is his responsibility after landing a 10-year contract, but as an offensive coordinator, he impressed in his opening test.
He certainly looked the contemporary of Rams coach Sean McCoy, one of the — if not the single — best offensive coordinators in the NFL.
Gruden simply didn’t have the right guy under center Monday.
And on a Raiders team this starved for talent, that’s a mortal sin.