Derek Carr isn’t happy with how his Raiders tenure came to an end. With questions surrounding his future in Las Vegas, Carr was benched for the Raiders’ final two games of the 2022 season. That decision truly marked the end of Carr’s nine-year stint with the organization, and the quarterback was ultimately cut in February.
The veteran has since caught on with the Saints, and he told Anthony Galaviz of the Fresno Bee that his experience at the end of the 2022 campaign is motivating him heading into 2023.
“I was, for lack of a better term, I was very upset; I was mad,” he said. “You spend nine years in a place, you have all the records and you can play at a high level and for something to get in the way, whether it was whatever reason, money related or whatever, injury related, I would have said I don’t even want the money, just to play two more times in front of our fans. I didn’t get that opportunity. So it definitely lit a fire inside me to keep going.”
The Raiders gave Carr a long leash after selecting him in the second round of the 2014 draft. The Raiders would only have a winning record in two of the next nine years, including a 2016 campaign where Carr went 12-3 as a starter but was sidelined for the team’s eventual playoff loss. When all was said and done, Carr only got into a single playoff game during his tenure with the Raiders, and he started 142 of the team’s 146 regular season games.
Over the quarterback’s nine-year tenure with the team, the Raiders went through six head coaches (including two interim HCs). Without any postseason success, Carr understood that he’d eventually be on the hot seat
“If you win more games and you keep being productive, you stay there forever,” Carr said. “But we didn’t win enough games and that’s the kind of stuff that happens with all the turnover of coaches; with all the different things. Eventually, the last guy in the room is usually going to be out at some point. And that’s really what happened.
“I’ve survived about 20 coaches and that’s how it goes and it is what it is.”
The Saints have been seeking some stability at the quarterback position since Drew Brees retired following the 2020 season. Neither Jameis Winston nor Andy Dalton did enough in 2022 to dissuade the front office from pursuing an upgrade, and Carr is optimistic that he can help the Saints compete for a playoff spot in 2023.
“There’s a lot of work and we have a tough division that we are going to have to compete against and we’re excited about the challenge,” he said.
Derek is an all-time raider. Was he the best, no. But he showed up day in and day out with all the garbage that went on around him. If they ever had a competent defense and a stable franchise around him, I really think he could have competed for a chip.
All that being said, the new regime deserves a guy who will follow their lead, and Derek deserves the right to play deep into December and January. I hope it works out for both of them. I also hope the guy can get the same head coach and play caller for more than a year or two.
Carr might not have been the best, but he was closer to that side of the spectrum than he was the other side. If we’re being unbiased and picking where to put blame on the Raiders’ lack of long lasting success during his tenure, I don’t think that we can put it on him.
The Adams signing, only to send Carr out the door immediately after, is a microcosm of how the Raiders inexplicably jumped from one position to the other during his career. You can only begin expecting greatness out of a good player when you as an organization offers stability in addition to sustained support. The Raiders not only changed coaches (we should note that Carr’s most successful season saw his coach canned immediately thereafter) innumerously, they also moved cities and fundamentally changed their offense repeatedly. Carr might have learned more offenses with the Raiders alone than the Saints have fielded in twenty years.
This isn’t to say that Carr was perfect, but he put his heart into his product and came back every year to lead the team no matter what the Raiders decided. And, for the most part, he did a good job in comparison to players around the league. I don’t think that people realize how rare that is on a player.
Saints have a good defense. They have good tools on the offense so let’s see how well they do this year.
Good luck , but it was time to divorce. Thanks for being a good dude. Go raiders
He was ok. Slightly better than Carson Palmer. It’s actually unbelievable that he was the best QB since Gannon. That’s because he hasn’t played in 20 years.
He makes a great point about the number of coaches he has been through. The teams with the most wins in the NFL since 2010 have the most stable coaching situations. The Patriots, Chiefs, Steelers, and Seahawks are all in the top 5. The Raiders, Commanders, Jets, Browns, and Jaguars are in the bottom five. There is a lot to be said for choosing the right coach and then sticking with them.
It’s easy to spin statistics when you realize (1) Kansas City has had Andy Reid only since 2013 and (2) New England’s coach is on the level of Jeff Fisher.
Derek Carr is a Raider legend on the level of Lamonica, Stabler, Plunkett — that legend will only grow once he hangs up his hat.
The Raiders haven’t had a clue for a couple of decades.
Carr doesn’t seem like a bad guy, quite the opposite. However, the raiders have always been a mess, and he has this cousins like ability to choke in the biggest moments trying to do too much.
The situation looks better in NO(eh) but something tells me history will repeat itself.
Sidebar
Lol @ Adams for forcing a trade to of all places the Raiders.
Oof..talk about wasted talent.
Carr’s only actually played in one playoff game in his career, and they may have won if not for a bizarre and flat out terrible officiating error. I’m not sure that that’s enough to call him a choke artist.
Besides, it’s really just lazy analysis to blame the QB for a team’s record. The only QBs who ever get hit with that label are the ones who actually are good in reality. The bad ones usually don’t that dubious “honor”.
You don’t get to the playoffs being a mediocre qb..
The correlation between the most important player on the team(qb) and a team success(record) is stark.
Plenty of mediocre QBs get to the playoffs. Daniel Jones did it last year. Sometimes, mediocre QBs win the Super Bowl. Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson did. Jim McMahon did. A lot of people consider Eli Manning a mediocre QB, and yet, he had two rings over a player that many consider at best the greatest of all time, and at worst a top player of all time. Even bad QBs, like Tebow, can make the playoffs.
All of those players have something in common, though, and that’s that they had good teams around them. QB is the most important player in today’s era, but it’s not the only position. Kirk Cousins’ Vikings won 13 games last year with the league’s 31st ranked defense, and lost to Daniel Jones’ Giants. People do not like Cousins, but any metric will tell you that he is a much better QB than Jones, at least right now. That defense lost the game, not Cousins.
There are other factors that influence playoff success than simply the personal responsibility of a QB, and on a team as messy as the Raiders were under Carr, the inconsistency of the team was far more impactful than a handful of plays by their mostly respectable QB.
Carr .. I’ve survived 20 coaches ..
Denis Allen .. *cough* ..
Carr said he would retire before playing for a team other than the Raiders so how much credibility does he really have now?
Give the guy a break; they cut him in his prime. He can’t help that the Raiders hired yet another incompetent GM and coaching staff
It’s rather silly to suggest Carr was blindsided. Even when Gruden was the HC it was well known that Carr wasn’t fully endorsed by management. If Carr had his eyes open he probably could have foreseen how things would eventually play out. Still he made that retirement comment which now looks absurd.
Carr was loyal to the Raiders. The Raiders were not loyal to him. They moved cities, changed coaches like underwear, traded away their greatest stars (Khalil Mack). It’s not Carr’s fault.
Looking forward to see how he does in New Orleans. At least Carr gets to keep wearing a stylish black uniform (black & silver, to black & gold) and not Miami’s orange & teal clown suit or Cleveland’s puke brown & rusty orange.
Gosh Alec, you make it sound like Mark Davis changed locations, fired coaches and traded players just to irk poor Derek…lol. Carr was well paid for any loyalty he may have had and if he really did choose his next destination on the basis of uniform colors or design, then he really is a dope.
I’m sorry that you’ve had to labour through life as a Browns or Dolphins fan, Lemon. We all have our own cross to carry.
Nice try Alec, but we’ve both been regulars at this site for the past 5 years and you know I’m no more a Browns or Dolphins fan than you’re a fan of the Cowboys.
Plenty.
The Raiders organization is a joke. *They* forced him out with no real plan, and it’s evident because they signed a guy with a long injury history that may not even be able to play this year. It’s been blunder after blunder with that team, and the only consistency they’ve ever shown is the consistency to continue to mess up.
The McDaniels hire was doomed to be a failure from the start because he’s an arrogant… yeah, you can probably guess what I want to say. The clown didn’t learn anything from Denver. He’s not a Head Coach. He may only be a marginally ok OC. It’s a lot easier to have success when you have a HoF QB that played for peanuts under center.
Everyone in that NE coaching and executive tree should send Tom Brady gifts for the rest of their lives for giving them enough cache around the league to keep their worthless tails employed. What credibility do they have?