Oakland Raiders: 2018 potentially a make or break year for Derek Carr

The Oakland Raiders are looking to rebound from a massively disappointing 2017 campaign and some believe the team’s $125 million dollar man might be on the hot seat this year.

Perhaps the only thing more disappointing than the Oakland Raiders in 2017 is that Keeping Up with the Kardashians is still actually a thing. Seriously, who watches that dumpster fire?

Though, to be fair, some might argue that the Raiders were even harder to watch than that garbage — and they might not necessarily be wrong.

A million different things went wrong with the Raiders in 2017. The offensive line didn’t play like the highest paid in all of football. The receivers dropped everything in sight. The running backs – and by running backs, we mean Jalen Richard – fumbled everything they got their hands on.

And the defense – oh, let’s not get started on the defense. Though, to be fair, they did improve once the albatross that was Ken Norton Jr. was removed from around their necks.

Following Norton’s dismissal and the elevation of John Pagano, the defense immediately responded with some better performances down the stretch. Not great, world beating defense, mind you, but better.

As disappointing as the team was, as a whole though, there was perhaps, no single bigger disappointment than quarterback Derek Carr.

Fresh off a 2016 season where he was a legitimate MVP candidate – and signing a $125 million dollar contract extension that made him, at least for a brief time, the highest paid quarterback in the NFL – Carr promptly went out and laid an egg in 2017.

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Carr’s regression has already been well chronicled. His stats were down in every conceivable category – except for interceptions, those happened to be up. He was jittery in the pocket, too quick to check down, and unwilling to wait for plays to develop.

It is undoubtedly a combination of things – a new offensive coordinator who proved to be incompetent and unfit for the job, a lack of trust between the two, the back injury he suffered against Denver, and an offensive line that was letting him get hit at a far higher clip than the previous year.

Carr’s struggles in 2017 were legion. And they’re complex. Intertwined. But, given that he’s being paid like a franchise quarterback and played like a journeyman backup, he’s going to take a lot of heat and criticism.

It comes with the job and the paycheck that goes with it.

To his eternal credit though, Carr never ducked away from responsibility. He stood up there, before the media week after week, and shouldered the blame for the latest loss. He put the team’s failures squarely on his own shoulders – and quite often, took the blame for things that weren’t anywhere near his fault.

Like a true leader, Carr took all of the slings and arrows and acted as the pin cushion for his team.

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Which is all well and good – admirable, even – but the NFL is a performance-based business and it’s the performance on the field that matters. And frankly, the on-field performance of the team, and Carr in particular, were absolutely sub-par.

The scrutiny that comes with being the highest paid quarterback in the game – and then coming out and flopping in the months immediately following earning that distinction – has led at least one writer to wonder aloud, whether or not Carr is on the hot seat this year.

And perhaps even more amazingly, whether the Raiders would part ways with him should his performance in 2017 prove to be the new normal, rather than a fluke.

The Mercury News writer, Dieter Kurtenbach, recently offered up a bit of speculation that, on its face, sounds absolutely preposterous. Carr is the Raiders’ franchise quarterback, right? Surely, there’s no way the team would part ways kick him to the curb, and even suggesting such a thing is either insanity or ignorance – right?

Maybe. But, it’s an interesting point to ponder when you take the emotion out of it, step back, and look at the bigger picture – a bigger picture that’s changed quite a bit now that Jack Del Rio is out and Jon Gruden has returned in a $100 million dollar blaze of glory.

Kurtenbach bases his speculation on an idea that not only isn’t wrong, but makes a certain amount of sense given the price of bringing Chucky back to the Silver and Black.

"“The stakes couldn’t be higher: Davis has taken out more than $800 million in loans — mostly from Bank of America, but also from the NFL — to help pay his cut of the team’s new Las Vegas Stadium, which they plan to move into in 2020. Soon, Davis will need to start selling personal seat licenses for that new stadium — reportedly, he is looking to recoup $250 million in those sales. That number could rise. And to fill those seats at the prices asked, in the nation’s 40th largest media market, Davis needs to have a good, exciting team to sell.”"

And given how high the stakes are, Kurtenbach takes the argument to its seemingly logical conclusion:

"“But if Carr doesn’t return to his MVP-caliber form, it won’t be Gruden who gets the boot — after all, the Raiders just made Gruden the highest-paid coach in NFL history.It’ll be Carr.”"

The conventional wisdom holds that Gruden and his reputation as a quarterback whisperer, will challenge Carr and will ultimately get the most out of him. The conventional wisdom says that with Gruden’s influence – not to mention new offensive coordinator Greg Olson, who helped turned Rams quarterback Jared Goff from certain bust into one of the league’s better passers – Carr will return to his 2016 MVP form.

And that’s entirely possible. 2017 may have been nothing more than an aberration. A confluence of horrible circumstances that conspired to derail his season. Or, put another way, a series of very unfortunate events.

But, what if it’s not? What if Gruden can’t help Carr rediscover his MVP caliber form? What if Carr is still suffering from the case of the yips that plagued him throughout the 2017 season? What if the regression we saw this past season continues into 2018?

Perhaps, the better question is – how short of a leash will Gruden have Carr on?

Carr’s contract, though impressive at first blush, contains an out after the 2018 season. If Carr’s regression continues through 2018 and he struggles once more, Oakland can cut him following the year and get out from under the weight of it – though, it will come at a cost of $7.5 million in dead money.

You wouldn’t think that Davis and GM Reggie McKenzie would want to eat that much in dead money. But, what if Oakland posts another sub-par year in 2018, and Gruden declares that Carr is beyond salvaging and wants to go in another direction at quarterback?

While not saying it’s the probably outcome, it still is entirely possible that, as Kurtenbach opines, Carr and not Gruden, could be the one shown the door.

Given the investment Davis has made in Gruden, and the fact that he’s apparently being allowed to operate with carte blanche, it would seem to lend Kurtenbach’s argument all the more credence. $7.5 million in dead money is a drop in the bucket to the nearly $80 million they’d owe Carr if he can’t get his mojo back and plays like he did in 2017.

Whether if be to create a buzz ahead of the move to Vegas, or if it’s simply because he has a Godzilla-sized man-crush on him, Mark Davis has gone all in with Gruden. And if Carr can’t find his way back to the form that made him a legitimate MVP candidate, he – and not Gruden – could be the one to pay the price.

Though nobody would likely say that Carr is actually on the hot seat, logic would seem to dictate that it has to be feeling a little bit warm at the moment. Knowing the team has an out, he’s going to have to come back in 2018 with a vengeance and play like he’s fighting for his job all over again.

Because, however unlikely you might think it is, it’s still possible that he’ll be doing just that next season.

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