Derek Carr apologizes for Raiders not getting his best last season
Derek Carr spent nine seasons as the Raiders’ starting quarterback. He missed only two games because of injuries in his time with the team and made four Pro Bowls.
Carr, though, started only one playoff game and won none, and the Raiders benched him for the final two games of last season after they decided to move on.
Carr apologized to the organization this week, saying he failed to give them the best version of himself last season.
“They just didn’t get my best and that drove me crazy at the end of the year because I felt so spread out in so many different ways,” Carr said this week, via Brett Martel of the Associated Press. “I just didn’t feel like myself and I feel bad for the [Raiders] coaches and players.”
Carr finished last season with his worst passer rating (86.3) since his rookie season of 2014. He threw 14 interceptions.
He blamed his self-described regression on a combination of professional and personal challenges. Carr would not elaborate on the personal matters, preferring to keep those private, but the professional challenges included learning another new offense.
The departure of Jon Gruden in the middle of the 2021 season lingered, with Carr calling it hard to move on.
But Carr said he learned from and grew from last season and is doing his best to have a “simple” focus in New Orleans.
“I’ve tried my best to get back to that. Hopefully, it leads to some success,” Carr said. “It’s going to be a great lesson for me to learn to help some guys down the road when they go through a coaching change or a shift in whatever they’re doing.”
Derek Carr apologizes for Raiders not getting his best last season originally appeared on Pro Football Talk
