Getty Former Las Vegas Raiders QB Derek Carr.
Derek Carr is going to play his first season for a team other than the Las Vegas Raiders but he’ll have plenty of familiar faces to make New Orleans feel like home. The Saints already had former Raiders head coach Dennis Allen as their head coach and have signed Johnathan Abram to the roster. Those won’t be the last former Raiders to end up in New Orleans.
The Saints announced that they have signed wide receiver Bryan Edwards.
Edwards first came into the NFL as a third-round pick of the Raiders. There was a lot of hype around him coming into the league but he was never able to break out in Las Vegas. His best season came in 2021 when he started in 12 games and had 34 catches for 571 yards. He was starting to develop a solid rapport with Carr before the Raiders traded him to the Atlanta Falcons. He wasn’t able to catch on in Atlanta and only played in seven games before getting cut. He then had a brief stint on the Kansas City Chiefs practice squad but was cut before the playoffs and didn’t play in a game for them. Perhaps a reunion with Carr could get him back on track.
Can Edwards Bounce Back on Saints?
There was talk of Edwards being a first-round pick back in 2020 if he didn’t suffer an injury prior to the draft. He’s got a big body at 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds. He also has good hands and can make contested catches. The problem with his game is that most balls thrown his way are contested catches because he has a hard time getting open.
Edwards doesn’t have great speed so he needs to win with route running. For whatever reason, he hasn’t been able to elevate that part of his game. The Saints have a dynamic young wide receiver in Chris Olave and Michael Thomas was arguably the best wide receiver in the NFL before he started suffering injury issues. They’ll be getting much more attention than Edwards, which could open things up for him.
Dave Ziegler Talks Raiders’ WR Corps
The Raiders’ wide receiver corps will look a bit different next season. Mack Hollins is off to the Falcons but the team added Jakobi Meyers. The Raiders have a lot of wide receivers who are good in the slot, which could change how the offense looks in 2023. General manager Dave Ziegler explained why the team constructed the wide receiver corps the way that they did.
“I don’t look at it as overlap as much as I look at it as versatility to be able to move people around and put them in different spots. … I’ve had similar circumstances in the past where say like Julian [Edelman] and Danny [Amendola] had some overlap in their skill set, but we also used it kind of to our advantage,” Ziegler said in an interview with Tashan Reed of The Athletic. “Those guys will give us flexibility to move people around. Jakobi has a lot of his production inside the numbers and I think that’s tailored to what we do offensively. I think it also highlights some of the things that Jimmy does well offensively, and where he throws the football well.”