Oakland Raiders: A few keys to victory over the Cleveland Browns

Spread The Wealth

One of Carr’s biggest problems so far this year – which is a team problem – is that he only seems capable of getting one receiver hot per game.

Against the Rams, it was tight end Jared Cook, who went off for 180 yards on nine catches. Nobody else had more than 55 receiving yards, and that was running back Jalen Richard. Against the Broncos, Amari Cooper finally had a breakout game with 10 catches for 116 yards – and nobody else had more than Cook’s 49 receiving yards.

And against the Dolphins, it was Jordy Nelson’s turn, as he had his Raiders coming out party with 173 yards on six grabs – nobody else had more than Richard’s 59 yards. And it is worth noting that 139 of those 173 of Nelson’s receiving yards came in the first half – and all of it on three receptions.

While it’s great that different guys are making plays, it’s incumbent upon Carr to get more people involved in the offensive gameplan. One of the things that makes the Patriots great, is that they have multiple people threatening to take over a game. Tom Brady has successfully utilized a number of different players throughout every single game, forcing teams to account for a number of different guys, instead of keying in on one guy, and letting the defenses react to just him.

If Carr wants to take the next step in his development, and be a great quarterback, he’s going to need to act more like Brady, distributing the ball to a number of different people, and less like a guy who can only seem to find one receiver at a time, per game.

The Raiders have a number of big play weapons – it’s critical that Carr learn how to use them all to better effect, than he has to this point in the season.