Raiders’ Carr responds to Del Rio
Quarterback provides good-natured retort to former coach on playing in cold weather
ALAMEDA >> Derek Carr warmed up to the line of questioning Wednesday.
With the Kansas City Chiefs up next at Arrowhead Stadium, with temperatures forecast in the low 40s with a low of 34 degrees, he knew full well the questions would be coming about both Arrowhead Stadium and his ability to play in cold weather.
Jack Del Rio, his head coach from 2015 through 2017, said on Twitter “#4 (Carr) hasn’t played well in cold weather games and that will have to change for Oakland to have a chance.”
Carr’s retort?
“Jack was there with me a couple of those times,” Carr said. “I used to think this was a team game. But, yes, it’s all my fault and I take full responsibility.”
With Del Rio the head coach and Carr the quarterback, the Oakland Raiders lost three times at Arrowhead Stadium in the 2015, 2016 and 2017 seasons.
Carr was laughing as he said it, and Del Rio, in a later tweet,
RAIDERS AT KANSAS CITY
When: Sunday, 1:25 p.m. TV: CBS
“I used to think this was a team game. But, yes, it's all my fault and I take full responsibility.”
– Derek Carr, Raiders quarterback, in response to Jack Del Rio’s tweet.
didn’t back down from his initial statement while at the same time making clear he wasn’t giving his former quarterback the cold shoulder.
“It is definitely a team game, and I’m hoping DC comes thru, plays well and helps his team earn a piece of 1st place in the AFC west!,” Del Rio tweeted.
Carr has played only four games in 89 starts where kickoff was at 40 degrees or below. The Raiders have lost them all and his 51.9 percent completion percentage with three touchdown passes and four interceptions reflect a struggle.
In games that began at 50 degrees or below, Carr is 2-8 with a 66.3 passer rating.
Carr shrugs off the cold weather talk, noting that he played Mountain West Conference games at night in places like Laramie, Wyoming, and Reno, Nevada.
“I’ve never really had a problem with it,” Carr said.
The Chiefs and Arrowhead, on the other hand, is another matter. Carr is 0-5 with a 61.9 passer rating with the Raiders losing by an average of 27-12. The earliest in the season Carr has ever played at Arrowhead is Dec. 8.
“Every time we play there, it’s like I realize, ‘oh,
dang, we haven’t won there yet,’” Carr said. “It hits you later on. It’s not something that’s conscious or anything like that.”
Bottom line is that in every instance except 2016, the Raiders were coming in with a losing record while the Chiefs were playoff-bound.
“They’ve been a really good team for a long time,” Carr said. “It’s a tough place to win. You can ask a lot of people who’ve been through there. It’s not easy. It’s rowdy, they put up a lot of points. Tough place, but that’s why we play the games. You look forward to moments like this.”
• The Raiders took charter buses with a police escort to an off-site indoor location in Alameda for their practice Wednesday. So why wouldn’t a team that played poorly in a 45 degree windy
day in New Jersey against the Jets take advantage of getting in some work in similar conditions?
Because it’s more of a teaching day than a practice day, something done at walk-through speed to introduce a Kansas City game plan. And it didn’t seem like a good idea to slog through a quagmire after a night of heavy rain.
“The field obviously had something to do with it,” Raiders coach Jon Gruden said. “The trainer had something to do with it. We needed an extra day for some guys and we needed to make some adjustments on our roster, obviously. So we took advantage of a great facility and got a lot of reps, a lot of teaching done.”
The plan is to practice at the facility on Thanksgiving, starting earlier so players will have time to be with
their families.
• Raiders place kicker Daniel Carlson missed a 43-yard field goal against the Jets, his shortest miss through 11 games. The ball appeared on track and then veered suddenly to the left in the wind at MetLife Stadium.
“It was swirling pretty good,” Carlson said. “I picked a line and I hit it, basically where I wanted to go and the ball just kind of rose. It was going into the wind and there was a crosswind — kind of a gust — and the ball just got up a little higher. When I hit it, I thought it was going in. Even some of the guys on the field goal unit were cheering, saying, ‘Hey, nice hit.’”
Carlson said the next time he kicks in similar conditions, he’ll approach things differently.
“You can learn some lessons from that going forward,” Carlson said. “If there’s a situation like that again, I’ll know to drive it a little more, maybe cut through that wind a little more. Obviously I’m upset at any missed kick, but that’s one hopefully I’ve learned something. I hit it the way I wanted, but not the way we needed to for that exact situation.”
• Raiders wide receiver Hunter Renfrow won’t play against the Chiefs after sustaining a cracked rib and a punctured lung against the Chiefs.