Derek Carr and the Raiders will soon be parting ways, and it sounds like it will in fact be fairly soon. On February 15th a contract clause that guarantees Carr $40 million will kick in, so he needs to be traded or released before then. Since Carr has a no-trade clause, he can make the team release him rather than trade him, enabling him to choose where he wants to go.
When Las Vegas first benched him, making it clear that Carr would be taking his talents elsewhere, I figured he'd have a hot market. There are a lot of teams in need of a franchise quarterback, and there will certainly be multiple interested parties.
But it's not going to be the level of excitement that accompanied, say, Peyton Manning when he was released by the Colts. Carr has been a good quarterback for most of his Raiders career. But he's come just a little short of being a great one.
I pulled out the year-by-year numbers, as we're wont to do this time of year, measuring Carr against the league's other quarterbacks. In fantasy terms, which is what we do here, he's generally been mediocre -- never bad, but never really great. At best he’s made it up to what would be considered a QB1. Just barely.
In nine seasons as a starter (2014-2022), Carr has never finished higher than 12th among fantasy quarterbacks, while also never finishing lower than 20th. That's in a scoring system that awards 1 point for every 20 passing yards and 10 rushing yards, with 4-point touchdown passes and 6-point touchdown runs.
Last year, fittingly, he was exactly in the middle of all those seasons: 16th.
| DEREK CARR, YEAR BY YEAR | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Pass | TD | Int | Run | RuTD | PPR | Rk |
| 2021 | 4804 | 23 | 14 | 108 | 0 | 343.0 | 12 |
| 2016 | 3937 | 28 | 6 | 70 | 0 | 325.9 | 12 |
| 2020 | 4103 | 27 | 9 | 140 | 3 | 347.2 | 13 |
| 2015 | 3987 | 32 | 13 | 138 | 0 | 343.2 | 14 |
| 2022 | 3522 | 24 | 14 | 102 | 0 | 282.3 | 16 |
| 2019 | 4054 | 21 | 8 | 82 | 2 | 306.9 | 17 |
| 2017 | 3496 | 22 | 13 | 66 | 0 | 273.4 | 18 |
| 2018 | 4049 | 19 | 10 | 47 | 1 | 291.3 | 18 |
| 2014 | 3270 | 21 | 12 | 92 | 0 | 256.7 | 20 |
Leaving out the Raiders, who are the teams definitely in need of a 2023 quarterback starter? I'm making a few assumptions (Kyler Murray healthy, the Falcons giving Desmond Ridder a shot, the Ravens working things out with Lamar Jackson, etc.) but, I'll say the main opportunities around the league look like the Jets, the Commanders, and then three-quarters of the two South divisions: Colts, Texans, Titans, Panthers, Bucs, Saints. Broadly speaking connecting any available quarterback with a team from the AFC or NFC South looks very reasonable.
Most likely, one of those teams will be bringing in Derek Carr to be their 2023 starter. Based on his career to this point, it seems like the best-case scenario is that he'll be pretty good. Not great.
--Andy Richardson