Derek Carr is frustrated. He said it after the Chargers game and you can see it on the field.
Usually when an offense sputters, the quarterback and the offensive coordinator share the blame, but the situation is different in Oakland. The only new element to this year’s offense is rookie offensive coordinator Todd Downing (and Raider fans generally perceive Carr to be infallible anyway).
Fans have been relatively patient with Downing, but Sunday was a tipping point.
For as much heat as defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. has taken, the team often won without a dominant defense. It seems worse for Downing because the Raiders high-powered offense can’t score and now the team can’t win.
Carr surely feels the pressure, but as much as anything, I’ll bet he wants to take the pressure off his offensive coordinator, who happens to be his good friend (whom he surely endorsed for the job). Thursday will be about beating the Chiefs, but you know Carr really wants this one for Downing.
Carr probably hasn’t faced pressure (on the football field) quite like what he’s shouldering this week and that’s maybe a good thing because he is usually at his best when the stakes are highest.
With so much on the line, I expect to see the very best of Derek Carr against the Chiefs. I think he’ll be in full mamba mode. He carried the defense a year ago and he may well have to carry his young coordinator this year.
Expect Carr and the Raiders to circle the wagon this week…
Oakland 27, Kansas City 24
twitter: @raidersbeat
REALLY? Ready to take some action on that prediction? I thought not.
Here here! Great comment!!
Tired of hearing excuses the past 4 weeks!!
Bottom line, over rated, over hyped, underachieved and mostly, “no heart.”
Football is a business! Call your friend after the game ! Carr hasn’t done **** ! Hope we score 0 points so Downing gets fired!
Carr has broken multiple franchise and NFL records, along with leading his team to 12 wins and a playoff birth. He won castrol clutch performer of the year, finished 3rd in MVP voting and is a 2 time pro bowler. Carrs actually done quite a bit in just over 3 seasons.
Lmao
Carr is no where near Kobe’s stature ! Black Mamba is Kobe not Carr!
lol Who cares who Mamba is. It’s a stupid name anyway. Just play football and win a game.
Right
Juls your retarded
I agree. Carr gotta shoulder this game with lots of audibles to save his friend as well as our season. Todd Downing has already charged that he’s not changing nothing.
lol the white mamba? he needs to get back on his O-line’s good side again.
maybe take them all for some juicy rib eyes and fix that bridge that has seemingly been unhooked.
lets go rrrrraiders, get this one!
I see this one like 45-9 KC. This isn’t going to be about pressure for the Raiders, it is just going to be about being more dysfunctional. If anyone has a statement to make, it is the coach and team that is coming off it’s 1 loss, which has beat Carr 6 times in a row, and basically destroyed us all 6 times. I think KC is going to take advantage of our porous, broken defense, and literally make an example of us. We don’t have the basic fundamentals that we need to play KC. They are a great team, with a ton of momentum. People saying Tyreek is some gimmick player need to wake up. With Hunt and Hill, and Smith 4.0…this team is going to DESTROY our defense. Then, our broken offense is going to do nothing. 3rd and 9, lets got for a screen behind the line of scrimmage, or let’s throw a 3 yard pass. Literally all our 4th quarter comebacks were build on play action, long passes, and mixing in fresh runners. This year we are seeing none of this. Hardly any passing to our RB. I think losing Murray is one of the biggest problems. He was a good blocker, he got us a lot of clutch plays, and he was great at catching when we needed first downs. I think Lynch and the OC and DC are holding us back. Lynch hasn’t had anything to speak of this season, except some stupid dance. He can’t get us big plays when we need, and he can’t seem to score on the goal line. Cooper is so bad, he is basically in the slot now. Crabtree and Patterson seem to be our whole offense. What in the heck are we even trying to do? Just wait till this KC game is a 40 point blow-out on primetime…and I think we may be talking about getting new OC before the bye week.
You don’t know **** about anything and your clearly not watching the game correctly, you sound like a fuckin idiot, we been in every game we played, just a couple mistakes and missed play calls caused us to lose, just got to fix those lil problems and we straight, got to much talent on this squad