After losing 10 consecutive games, winning your first regular season game must feel like winning the Super Bowl. At least, that's how it looked for the Oakland Raiders last week.
The Raiders beat their AFC West rivals, the Kansas City Chiefs, on Thursday night with a fourth quarter touchdown pass from Derek Carr to James Jones. Alex Smith had Dwayne Bowe wide open in the end zone on the previous drive, but chose to throw the ball away to settle for a field goal that ultimatley proved to be decisive. Carr, a rookie starter for the Raiders, has been receiving many plaudits for his play this year from various areas of the media. This moment on primetime only solidified the future prominence of how consistent and impressive he has been in a very tough situation.
While that is the narrative, it feels unfair to truly sell that idea to fans and simply foolish to sell it to fantasy owners.
Carr isn't in a great situation, his team is historically bad at running the ball, in spite of Latavius Murray's big plays on Thursday. He also doesn't have spectacular wide receivers or a superstar tight end. He does have a very effective pass-protecting offensive line and an offensive coordinator who has clearly put an emphasis on gameplanning to his strengths, while masking his weaknesses. While Carr's receivers aren't spectacular, they're also nowhere near as bad as has been reported throughout the season.
Each of James Jones, Andre Holmes and Kenbrell Thompkins are good athletes with wide catch radiuses. Mychal Rivera is a developing talent at tight end who has been fairly consistent to this point in his career.
Therefore, while it's easy to point to the Raiders' losing record and their relatively unknown cast of players, it's unfair to simply use those two facts to suggest that Carr has a bad supporting cast. In comparison to Teddy Bridgewater or Blake Bortles, Carr has an impressive supporting cast. Bridgewater and Bortles both have poor offensive lines in front of them, Bridgewater's is proving to be fatal to this point because of Matt Kalil's play. An offensive line is often more important than the quality of a quarterback's receivers, because receivers can be thrown or schemed open and it's difficult to cover any NFL caliber receiver when the quarterback has three or four seconds to stand in the pocket on every snap.
In this situation, Carr has thrown 14 touchdowns and nine interceptions with 2,249 yards while completing 59.1 percent of his passes. Even though those statistics aren't spectacular, they do flatter him somewhat over the season as a whole.
Coming out of college, Carr was considered as someone with a very strong arm, a quick release and decent athleticism. He played in a scheme at Fresno State that limited how often he had to manage an NFL-style pocket or make difficult throws. Furthermore, he wasn't a quarterback who dropped back and looked from receiver-to-receiver on a regular basis. In the NFL, the Raiders have constructed an offense that allows Carr to get rid of the ball quickly on designed bootlegs and rollouts or with route combinations outside that are designed to free his first read with haste. They've also used max protection and play-action to aid their offensive line, an offensive line that has regularly given Carr a huge amount of space to work with in the pocket.
This is something I touched on in an article a few weeks ago, but with the renewed celebration surrounding Carr after their first victory, it's worth evaluating his performance in that game more closely to understand if he is getting better or not.
Carr had 36 throws against the Chiefs that could be evaluated. His raw statistics gave him 174 yards and one touchdown with no interceptions on 18 completions. If we treat Carr less harshly because he is a rookie and not judge him by accurate and inaccurate but rather by catchable and uncatchable, he threw 21 catchable passes and 15 uncatchable passes against the Chiefs. Of those 21 catchable passes, five were flat throws(either behind the line of scrimmage or screen plays). Of the 15 uncatchable passes, four were so inaccurate that they didn't even land on the field of play. Some of those uncatchable passes were throwaways, but not all of the throwaways were good decisions.
Accuracy isn't specifically Carr's issue, he's not exceptionally accurate but he's also not exceptionally inaccurate. Instead, Carr's primary problem is his decision making and his reaction to pressure.
This was Carr's best play of the night. He stepped forward in the pocket with his edge rushers coming outside of him, before delivering the ball downfield to a crossing receiver. This is the kind of play that Carr has made most consistently this year, but that's not to say he's done it often. He is comfortable moving forward when there is a lot of space in front of him and when he doesn't need to take his eyes away from his first receiver or adjust his body positioning to angle the throw away from the middle of the field.
Once the requisite movement becomes more complex, Carr has significant issues.
On this play, Carr makes the same initial movement with success to evade the first edge rusher. However, as soon as he doesn't have his first read to throw the ball to down the field, he panics. Carr's footwork is poor and he immediately turns to his checkdown option in the flat. Carr doesn't throw the ball with good mechanics, as he is falling away from where the ball is going and he doesn't make a good decision with the ball. His receiver in the flat is well covered and even if he catches the ball, he will likely be stopped at or behind the line of scrimmage. Furthermore, Carr's pass was catchable but inaccurate so the play ultimately resulted in an incomplete pass.
It's hard to give Carr credit for his movement in the pocket because he is rarely under quick pressure and rarely working in confined areas. Even when he makes subtle movements to put himself in a better position, he is often locking onto his first read and simply evading one rusher in a lot of space.
If Carr was a better thrower under pressure, his pocket movement issues would be less of a problem, but he reacts terribly to pressure.
On this play, the Chiefs get a free rusher at Carr, but he comes on a delayed blitz. This gives Carr time to stand strong and deliver the ball down the field on Third-and-Four. Justin Houston also comes free, but Carr sensed that pressure and moved to his left to get away from him. When the free rusher arrives, Carr fades backwards to protect himself from the incoming hit. Because of that, his pass flutters between two downfield receivers so it's difficult to know exactly who he was throwing the ball to. Either way, he should have thrown the ball to the receiver running a curl route at the first down marker.
Carr had plenty of time to deliver this ball to his receiver accurately, but the impending hit made him play scared and undisciplined. Whether Carr even considered that receiver is unclear, but he should have because the route combinations of the play call put all of his reads in the same area of the field.
Because he's a rookie, using Carr's reaction to actual pressure to condemn him would be unfair. He can still get better in that area. However, his reaction to pressure that doesn't exist and his overall decision making is something that can be used to condemn him. In this particular game, Carr threw at least four passes that were worthy of being intercepted because of his poor decision making and his reaction to pressure that didn't exist.
On the Raiders' final drive of the game, Carr threw what proved to be the game-winning touchdown. However, on the same drive, a few plays before finding James Jones in the end zone, Carr threw the ball straight to Husain Abdullah. He did this despite not being under any pressure and having a wide receiver open down the field. Once again, it was Carr's mechanics that led to his inaccurate pass as he released the ball while moving backwards and without his feet planted in the ground. This is the kind of thing Carr does while under pressure, something that other quarterbacks do, but it's not the kind of thing that good NFL quarterbacks do even when they are under pressure.
Decision making is something that is more likely to develop over the course of a young quarterback's career. Carr's needs to develop a lot, but that won't matter if he continues to react to pressure that doesn't exist.
While we have to always take into account that quarterbacks are developing creatures who will ultimately fall down around their strengths or rise up above their flaws, it's also fair to criticize them and attempt to play the percentages while projecting their careers forward. Right now, it's hard to call Carr the best rookie quarterback of an unspectacular rookie class. Teddy Bridgewater in Minnesota has handled a much worse situation with greater consistency and even he hasn't been very impressive on the whole. Moving forward, Carr shouldn't be considered a priority player. He is an Andy Dalton or Nick Foles caliber of quarterback. Someone who will be okay if used properly with a strong supporting cast, but not an above average individual.
If we wait to see where Carr's career goes, we will have the benefit of hindsight to judge him. However, if you wait too long in fantasy football instead of playing the percentages, you're just putting yourself in a losing position.
Other Thoughts from the tape
Nothing about Odell Beckham's arrival in the NFL should come as a surprise. He was the most pro-ready receiver with exceptional overall levels of talent. Even without a preseason because of injury, Beckham has looked like he always belonged in the NFL. There are no limitations to how good Beckham can become. Don't fixate on his size, because he doesn't play small. Although, I shouldn't need to tell you that after that reception last night.
On the other side of this LSU coin sits Zach Mettenberger of the Tennessee Titans. Mettenberger was Beckham's quarterback at LSU. He worked in a run-heavy offense despite having Jarvis Landry and Beckham as his outside receivers. It may not be fair to use that to judge Mettenberger, but it does reflect his level of talent. He never got the most out of the weapons that were around him and he seems to be having the same issues with the Titans. He had impressive statistics last week, but those largely came late in the game during garbage time.
Dwayne Bowe has been held back by bad quarterback play throughout his career and it's something that has been the case again this season. Obviously Bowe hasn't caught a touchdown pass, since Smith hasn't thrown one to a wide receiver this year, but he should have. Against the Raiders last week, Bowe was open in the end zone on the Chiefs' second-to-last drive of the game, but Smith threw the ball away instead of finding him with a relatively easy pass. Bowe is playing well, but he just can't put up good numbers if he's stuck with Smith forever.
Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks offense is probably not going to turn it around at this stage. The Seahawks have been making it work to an extent, but they are limited by having to rely on Ricardo Lockette, Cooper Helfet, and Tony Moeaki with just Doug Baldwin as an established receiving threat. Baldwin is having a quiet season also. To compound those problems, the offensive line has been poor this season. Wilson is always going to be a valuable option because of his rushing ability and he put that on show again against the Arizona Cardinals last week.
