On Sunday, the 6-9 Las Vegas Raiders will face the 11-4 San Francisco 49ers at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium. The Raiders will do so with quarterback Jarrett Stidham, as head coach Josh McDaniels announced Wednesday that he is benching Derek Carr for the final two games of the season.
It is certainly a challenge for Stidham, the 2019 fourth-round pick of the New England Patriots, back when McDaniels was the Patriots’ offensive coordinator. The 49ers have the NFL’s best defense, and Stidham has completed 32 of 61 passes in his NFL career for 342 yards, two touchdowns, four interceptions, and a passer rating of 52.8. The Raiders are currently the AFC”s 12-seed in the playoff race, and while they haven’t been technically eliminated from the postseason, that’s all but done.
That said, it’s an interesting time to make the move.
Head Coach Josh McDaniels addresses the QB position. pic.twitter.com/1rdhTSsNKr
— Las Vegas Raiders (@Raiders) December 28, 2022
Carr, who signed a three-year, $120.5 million extension this season, has a $32.9 million guaranteed salary in 2023 which counts against the Raiders’ cap if he’s on the roster on the third day of the league year. His full $34,875 million 2023 cap charge is offset by a mere $5.625 dead cap charge if he’s outright released. That might be more likely than the Raiders finding a trade partner, unless there’s another NFL team in love with Carr’s potential to take on the salary structure through at least next season.
This season, Carr has completed 305 of 502 passes for 3522 yards, 24 touchdowns, a league-high 14 interceptions, and a passer rating of 86.3. Both the passer rating and completion rate (60.8%) are the lowest Carr has posted since his rookie season of 2014.
There had been recent rumors that this might happen, and that was the case even before the Raiders’ 13-10 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers last Saturday. But that game, in which Carr completed just 16 of 30 passes for 174 yards, one touchdown, three interceptions, and a passer rating of 42.2, was likely the last straw for Carr’s head coach and offensive shot-caller. It was an eight-degree kickoff with a wind chill of minus-10 degrees at Pittsburgh’s Acrisure Stadium, but Carr still needed to get something done. Which he did not.
“It’s tough to overcome,” McDaniels said postgame. “If you lose the turnover battle in this league, most of the time you lose the game. So, our ability to take care of the football, I mean, was the strength earlier in the year. Obviously, haven’t done a very good job of that in the last month or so. We’ve gotten away with it a little bit. But tonight, just cost us too many other opportunities. We didn’t have possession of the ball much because we turned it over. We had some negative plays and penalties in the second half and that kind of hurt our ability to, I’d say, continue to stick runs in there and try to eventually get something going. I think we had the big one and got called back with the penalty. But, yeah, when you turn the ball over and give the other team more opportunities than you have, a good field position, it’s just impossible to overcome.”
There are games in which quarterbacks aren’t necessarily to blame for their interceptions — receivers run the wrong routes and drop balls, and sometimes, the defense just gets the better of you. But Carr’s game against the Steelers was… not great.
“I mean, everyone had to play in them,” Carr said of the weather conditions. “No matter what, you’ve got to do your job as best you can and for me, I’m just trying my best to hit my guys and find the open receiver. There were a few that I threw away that were over guys that I threw away because of certain reasons and things like that. But I felt good.”
If Carr felt good, it did not show up on tape.
Carr’s first interception, which came with 11:48 left in the third quarter, was an errant throw over the middle to tight end Fabian Moreau, and cornerback Arthur Maulet was happy to take advantage.
The second interception, which came two drives later with 4:44 left in the third quarter? Similar bad throw over the middle, but this time, receiver Hunter Renfrow was the target, this time, Carr threw behind instead of ahead, and this time, defensive back Minkah Fitzpatrick was the lucky recipient.
The third pick came with 36 seconds left in the game, and the Raiders at their own 29-yard line, trying to at least get into field goal range. Renfrow was open deep over the middle on a switch release with Davante Adams, but Carr threw his target closed, and cornerback Cameron Sutton completed the trifecta.
Carr’s bad game against the Steelers was representative of a larger, more worrisome trend. In Weeks 1-11, Carr completed 217 of 348 passes (62.4%) for 2,435 yards (7.0 yards per attempt), 15 touchdowns, five interceptions, and a passer rating of 91.6. Since Week 12, Carr has completed 88 of 154 passes (57.15) for 1,087 yards (7,1 YPA), nine touchdowns, nine interceptions, and a passer rating of 74.2.
This is not what anybody expected. Not when the Raiders named McDaniels their head coach on January 31 in the wake of the Jon Gruden scandals. Not when Carr got that contract extension. Certainly not when the Raiders traded for Adams, Carr’s old Fresno State teammate. And certainly not when people imagined Carr throwing to Adams, Renfrow, tight end Darren Waller, and the rest of Las Vegas’ dynamic targets. Were it not for the Herculean efforts of running back Josh Jacobs, the Raiders probably would have been eliminated from playoff contention a long time ago.
Given McDaniels’ history of willful decisions during his disastrous time as the Denver Broncos’ head coach in 2009 and 2010, it’s easy to assume that this is McDaniels overreacting to one game. More likely, this is part of a larger and longer process regarding Carr’s future with the organization, and McDaniels’ desire for a more ideal quarterback to suit his offensive concepts.
Sadly for Carr, he hasn’t done much of late to mount a counter-argument.
If the Raiders sit Derek Carr Sunday, it will be the 4th game he misses in 9 seasons and the 1st not due to injury.
His salary of $33 million next year and $7.5 million in 2024 become guaranteed if he gets hurt, and front office met last 2 nights to decide on course of action.— Vic Tafur (@VicTafur) December 28, 2022
Carr isn’t broken like Russell Wilson or anything, but this season has been an overall regression, and wherever he goes from here, he’ll have to get things right.
