The Las Vegas Raiders Are Making The Wrong Call

The Las Vegas Raiders have benched Derek Carr and reports say the team will be moving on from the 31-year old QB. Not that Carr has been the shining example of consistency throughout his career but at a closer look, is he the real problem?

Let’s not forget that the Raiders are a year removed from a 10-7 season, one that had them favored in the playoffs. They would ultimately come up short to the Cincinatti Bengals who made a Super Bowl run. The next season in 2022, the Las Vegas Raiders are 13th in the AFC, long out of a playoff spot. What a difference a yeaer can make. The Raiders can put all the blame on Carr all they want, but it couldn’t be their own failure to blame, right?

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Do the Las Vegas Raiders not look at Josh McDaniels and see the problem. As a head coach McDaniels is 17-27, meaning he’s lost about 2 out of every 3 games he’s coached. How is he not the problem. Why was Jon Gruden able to get out of this team what McDaniels can’t? Even through the rebuilding seasons with the Raiders, Carr still has a record of 63-79 (44%). McDaniels has been a head coach for just 3 years. At his current pace, it would take him just shy of 8 years to catch up with his quarterback. In his career, the signal caller has never had consistency at coach, a revolving door of players, and a team that up and moved to a whole new state. The Las Vegas Raiders are a shining example of inconsistency.

But let’s throw Derek Carr under the bus.

It couldn’t be that running back Josh Jacobs had over 100 more rushing attempts doubling his yards to 1600+ as of writing this. The Raiders picked up Devante Adams so surely Carr would improve. Adams improved over Hunter Renfrow’s team leading reception yards last year but with Renfrow only playing 9 games this season, the subsituted one for the other. Darren Waller was second on the team in 2021 with 665 yards, had his productivity cut in almost cut half in 2022 with 353 yards. As a matter of fact, other than Adams who is a top WR in the NFL and Jacobs who had 100 more attempts, the majority of the Raiders team regressed.

Now, you can pin that on the quarterback all you want. In today’s NFL QBs have to have thick skin as they’ll shoulder most of the blame. However, let’s call it what it is, Josh McDaniels doesn’t want to stick with a QB that he didn’t hand pick. When your QB throws the ball 100 times less than a year before and the running back has 100 more carries, your head coach is using your quarterback as the scape goat. He wants the fans to point to Adams’ stats and Jacobs’ stats and show that the QB who’s not his guy is the problem. Sorry, I’m not buying that from a HC who barely wins over 33% of his games.

Derek Carr will probably land with a contender next year, and the Las Vegas Raiders will probably have to suffer through another 10-loss season.