Derek Carr Must Make Major Strides for the Raiders to Be Relevant Again
Derek Carr landed in a perfect situation last year.
No, the Oakland Raiders didn't have 10 All-Pro players sharing the field with him or a dominant defense with a brilliant supporting cast to alleviate the pressure on him. Instead, he had no expectations to meet on a team that would keep him out of the spotlight.
Carr had no expectations for a couple of reasons. For one, he wasn't a first-round pick. He went in the second round and wasn't expected to start ahead of Matt Schaub during his rookie season. Carr took Schaub's job, but it appeared to be more of a reflection of Schaub's decline than Carr's ascension.
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As somewhat of a surprise starter on what was considered one of the worst teams in the NFL, it wouldn't have surprised anyone if Carr completely collapsed during the initial stages of his career.
If he did, it likely wouldn't even be held against him moving forward. Any struggles that Carr had could be brushed aside under the guise of his lack of wide receiver talent, a no-name offensive line, no running game or an offensive coordinator, Greg Olson, who was overly cautious with his approach.
Each of those elements had a legitimate impact on his output last season. Of course they did; context is always important. However, it can also be overstated.
While starting all 16 regular-season games, Carr completed 348 of 599 pass attempts (58.1 percent) for 3,270 yards, 21 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. In the context of being a rookie starter, those numbers are impressive. Most rookie quarterbacks are turnover-prone as they adjust to the NFL. Carr's 12 interceptions suggest he wasn't.
"Suggest" being the key word there.
Carr was turnover-prone. He was among the most turnover-prone passers in the whole league last year. For as much criticism as Carr's supporting cast comes under, Olson did a huge amount to mask the recklessness of his quarterback.
In Olson's offense, Carr repeatedly threw short passes. He focused on screen plays, quick passes to the flat and safe boundary throws that required horrendous quarterback play to give the cornerback any kind of chance at catching the football.
Going through all of Carr's throws in this offense revealed that he threw an interceptable pass once every 17.1 pass attempts, fifth-worst among the evaluated quarterbacks:
An interceptable pass is a throw that should have been intercepted as a direct result of the quarterback's action. Interceptable passes that weren't directly the quarterabck's fault weren't included in that number, so it accounts for the impact of the supporting cast and situation by discounting plays such as Hail Mary passes.
That's a major issue for Carr because his selling point during his rookie year was his ability to avoid making major mistakes despite playing with a bad supporting cast.
He doesn't control the quality of defensive back play that allowed him to get away with so many bad throws and decisions, so it's difficult to credit him for only having 12 interceptions. That's not to say there aren't reasons to be excited about Carr. The problem is the negatives vastly outweight the positives.
In 2015, Carr will have far greater expectations placed upon him. He needs to show growth to push the Raiders back toward relevance, and he should have an improved supporting cast with Amari Cooper, Rod Streater and Michael Crabtree expected to be available.
The positives must be framed by how few and far between they were, but they also shouldn't be completely ignored.
Things to Build On
The mental side of being a quarterback is typically more important than the physical side, but physical traits are still important. It's easy to fall in love with Carr's athleticism because he has impressive arm talent and enough mobility to extend plays into either flat.
Just as significant as his ability to move is his willingness to keep his eyes downfield when he does.
On this play, Carr initially executes a deep drop in the pocket that featured a play fake. The backside pressure causes him to escape toward the right flat. Instead of racing the edge defender on that side of the field to the sideline, Carr has the awareness and physical ability to reverse back into the pocket.
He escapes one tackle attempt by adjusting his upper body before moving forward. Importantly, while he moves forward, he attempts to square his shoulders to the line of scrimmage, putting himself in position to throw.
For a moment, he appears ready to reset his feet and stop, but another defender forces him to keep moving. Carr is able to extend the play into the left flat and still make an accurate throw downfield.
This play ultimately didn't count because of an illegal formation penalty, but Carr's athleticism and awareness once he had broken the design of the play was impressive nonetheless.
Carr doesn't have the kind of athleticism that makes him a dual-threat quarterback. He won't beat Colin Kaepernick or Robert Griffin III in a straight sprint. However, he can be a threat as a scrambler, as evidenced by his 41-yard run against the Houston Texans on a designed run from an option play.
Leg speed is never as important as arm talent for a quarterback. Carr's leg speed is impressive, but his arm talent can be simply outstanding.
Arm talent isn't the same as arm strength. Arm strength simply quantifies how fast and how far you can throw the ball. Arm talent extends past that somewhat. Arm talent also considers how you can manipulate the trajectory of the ball.
This is a crucial distinction because it's important for NFL quarterbacks to fit the ball over defenders and attack tighter windows downfield.
Carr offers the kind of easy arm strength that Joe Flacco boasts, but he also has the kind of trajectory manipulation that Ryan Tannehill shows off. This makes his arm talent attractive to those who understand the value of the latter over the former.
If harnessed correctly, a quarterback with the arm talent of Carr can be accurate to all levels of the field. Carr has all of that arm talent, and he also boasts a quick release. The potential for a player with those traits can be very, very high.
Finding examples of Carr's arm strength isn't difficult. There were typically a couple per game last season. Finding examples of his mental acumen is a tougher exercise, but they do exist.
This play against the Miami Dolphins was his best of the season.
His first read on this play was to the right sideline. He lingered on it during his dropback and for a moment when he settled at the top of it. Backside pressure then forced him to step up into the pocket, which he did while bringing his eyes away from his first read to scan across the field.
On 3rd-and-6, Carr was able to locate his receiver on the left sideline in time to throw the comeback route. He used his arm talent to push the ball that far and to a catchable spot for his target.
This was a smart, effective play from Carr. Having the ability to diagnose the coverage while adjusting in the pocket is the most difficult part of being an NFL quarterback, but it's also a hugely important one. It's what allows a quarterback to elevate his teammates by making the play work as designed.
When Carr did adjust well in the pocket, it normally came on plays that asked him to step forward without resetting or adjusting his feet dynamically.
Third-and-10 is an obvious blitz down. Carr faced a large number of 3rd-and-longs in 2014 because the Raiders struggled to run the football. While this hurt the productivity of the offense, it helped to stress Carr's skill set to the point where every facet of his game could be thoroughly examined.
On this play, the Cardinals drop two of their front seven defenders and send the other five after the quarterback.
Because the two defenders who dropped did so from the left side of the offense, the slot receiver running down the seam is open from the start of the play. In a perfect world, Carr would have recognized this at the snap and immediately thrown the ball to him.
While that receiver would have caught the ball well before the line of scrimmage, he should have comfortably made it more than nine yards downfield.
Despite missing his hot route, Carr escapes the incoming pressure by stepping forward in the pocket at the perfect time. He finds space between two incoming defenders before resetting his feet to throw the ball downfield.
From there, he fits the ball to James Jones, who ran a comeback route against Antonio Cromartie down the left sideline.
This willingness to step up in the pocket is important. It's what allows quarterbacks to negate edge pressure on a consistent basis. Carr earned the first down because of it, and it masked his mental failure to diagnose the blitz at the snap.
Things to Correct
Carr has the arm talent to make any throw asked of him. He can perfectly place back-shoulder throws against tight coverage to receivers with limited ball skills. However, for as talented as his throwing ability is, his consistency and his mechanics are major problems.
When charting every throw of the 2014 season, it became clear that Carr's potential throwing ability isn't close to his actual throwing ability:
Each green tick on the above chart represents an accurate throw. Each red cross represents an inaccurate throw. The chart is not a reflection of completions and incompletions. Furthermore, it does not include every throw, only every throw that offers value in terms of evaluation. As such, throwaways/Hail Marys/spikes are not included.
There are 551 total passes represented—379 accurate throws and 172 inaccurate throws. His 68.8 percent accuracy percentage isn't necessarily impressive considering where most of his throws went.
Carr stockpiled simple, accurate passes on short throws, with a particularly huge percentage coming at or behind the line of scrimmage. When he was asked to push the ball further downfield, his ability to find his receivers became more and more problematic.
Blaming the wide receivers is the natural reaction considering the names on the Raiders depth chart, but that would be unfair to what those receivers did on the field. While they weren't spectacular, they weren't so limiting that they couldn't be effective when given opportunities at the catch point.
The biggest problem was they weren't being given enough opportunities.
What stood out most was how the young quarterback reacted to pressure. Pressure makes every single quarterback in the NFL less effective—but to different degrees. Some players simply see their efficiency drop a degree or two, while others become incompetent. As a rookie, Carr was a member of the latter group.
This play comes from a Week 15 game against the Kansas City Chiefs. It's midway through the fourth quarter of a blowout loss. The Chiefs send pressure after Carr on 3rd-and-5. The defense has sent more rushers than the Raiders have in pass protection, so Carr has to back up to buy time in the pocket.
However, as he backs up, he continues to back up through his throwing motion. There were five yards between him and the closest defender when he began his throwing motion. Carr had no reason to fade backward so dramatically.
His pass landed nowhere near his intended target, and that wasn't the only issue.
Tight end Mychal Rivera ran a deep corner route that was always covered. The underneath cornerback and deep safety bracketed him down the field. The cornerback even stopped in coverage once Carr threw the ball because he could see it was drifting way too far toward the sideline.
Rivera never had a chance at the ball, but he never should have been the target. Instead, the obvious option was the receiver running a slant from the right.
That receiver was in Carr's line of vision and running into wide-open space over the middle of the field. A simple throw would have resulted in an easy first down, while also allowing Carr to get rid of the ball much earlier against the pass rush. He wouldn't even have had to absorb a hit.
On its own, this was a bad play. Stacked with others from Carr's season, it becomes a sign of a potentially fatal flaw. From Week 1 to Week 17, there are examples of Carr ruining plays because of his lack of poise in the pocket.
This play comes from Week 1 against the New York Jets. Carr's first read is his tight end running a short out route to his left. That route is covered, so Carr immediately looks back to the middle of the field before panicking and running out of the pocket to the right.
If he had understood the coverage that he was looking at to his left and shown better awareness, he'd have noticed his slot receiver coming wide open for a 50-plus-yard touchdown down the sideline.
This play comes from Week 3 against the New England Patriots. It's 3rd-and-10 close to midfield, and the Raiders have a rare lead. Noting the alignment of the offense before the snap is crucially important here. Carr only has one receiver to his right, a receiver who runs infield on a slant route.
His running back to that side of the field stays in to block. Yet when Carr's first read, that slant route, isn't available, he immediately runs backward out of the pocket and into the right flat.
By running into the right flat, Carr took himself away from the other routes on the field. There was no pressure pushing him in that direction. He decided to run that way out of sheer panic. To the top of the screen, wide receiver Rod Streater had badly beaten the slot cornerback on an out route.
Streater was open for a first down, and Carr could have found him if he had stayed in the pocket and read the defense.
Instead of locating the open receiver downfield and throwing the ball within the timing of the offense, Carr did what he so often did last year: He checked down to a covered target who was in no position to get a first down.
This play comes from Week 4 against the Miami Dolphins. Carr throws the ball as soon as he reaches the top of his drop, even though he has plenty of space in the pocket. He missed his running back in the flat, but even if he had thrown an accurate pass, the linebacker was there to knock him out (which he did anyway).
As the final section of the above image highlights, Carr had thrown the ball before his receivers had even gotten into their routes. The Dolphins hadn't blitzed, so there was no reason for this immediate throw.
Even during Carr's signature drive of his rookie season, a Monday Night Football game-winning drive against the Chiefs during the second half of the season, his poor pocket play should have cost his team a victory. Andre Holmes was open on a corner route, but the ball floated over his head into the safety's hands.
That happened because Carr threw the ball without setting his feet from a completely clean pocket. Fortunately for him, the safety dropped the ball.
Rushing throws is one of the primary aspects of Carr's play that he needs to address. Not only did it cause him to miss open receivers down the field, but it also allowed defenders to get a read on where he was going with the ball.
This not only made it more difficult for receivers to come free downfield, but it also allowed the underneath coverage to break on the ball when he threw over the middle of the field.
A huge percentage of Carr's throws were safe: out-breaking routes against off coverage outside and play-action throws to tight ends or fullbacks running underneath. This allowed Carr to get away with predetermining throws, so he will need to prove he can adjust in a new offensive scheme next season.
In the NFL, you can have limited arm strength or overall athleticism to still be effective. However, if you combine bad footwork with poor decision-making and an inability to see the field, you won't be a capable starter. Carr needs to fix these elements of his game, but it's rare that a quarterback ever does.
Carr's touchdown-to-interception ratio as a rookie will be a cane for fans of his to lean on until the season begins. However, some notable dissenting voices became more prominent during the offseason once there was more time to review his tape in greater detail.
Rookie quarterbacks struggle. That's the nature of the NFL. But the degree of each individual's struggle is what matters. Even though much of the coverage suggests Carr was close to Minnesota Vikings QB Teddy Bridgewater, there was actually little that separated Carr and Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Blake Bortles.
Neither player did much to suggest they should be a long-term starter, while Bridgewater already looks like an average-to-above-average starter.
Carr can obviously develop to become a quality starter. The Raiders need him to make major strides during his second season so the squad as a whole can move closer to being a .500 team. His development, more Latavius Murray at running back and the bolstered group of receivers would help the team make a dramatic leap from where they were last season.
The Raiders offense ranked 30th in DVOA on offense last season, 28th in passing and 32nd in running, per Football Outsiders.
Although next season is likely a year too early for the Raiders to contend for a playoff spot, the arrow will be pointing in that direction if Carr develops quickly.
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