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It’s hard to imagine the season getting off to a better start for Derek Carr. After getting hit over the head with rumors all offseason that he was going to lose his job, the Las Vegas Raiders are 2-0 and he’s looked really good in the process. He’s completing 73.5% of his passes and has thrown four touchdowns to zero interceptions.
Despite that fact, people in the media are still taking shots at Carr. Sam Monson of Pro Football Focus recently went after the quarterback because he believes “it just feels wrong” when he throws the deep ball and suggested Carr “doesn’t know what he’s doing”. Here’s the clip below.
Monson Gets Lit up Online
Suggesting that a former MVP candidate, who’s playing some of the best football of his career, doesn’t know what he’s doing is absurd. It sounds like Monson is intentionally trying to get a reaction from people. Well, it worked and he got Raider Nation into quite a frenzy after he dropped the clip.
David Carr never stays silent when his brother is getting attacked and he laid into Monson.
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PFF Consistently Ranks Carr Among Best Deep Passers
Carr has been the subject of much criticism over the last few years and some of it is definitely warranted. However, the deep ball criticism from Monson makes no sense when you look at the analytics from the website HE WORKS FOR. Monson himself said in May that Carr is a good deep passer when he lets it rip:
It’s not that Derek Carr is bad at passing deep, it’s just that it seems to be near impossible to convince him to try it. He had just 48 deep attempts last season, which was one of the lower deep shot rates (9.4%) in the league. His completion rate and other numbers weren’t terrible on those plays; the Raiders just need to find a way to coax him into attempting more of them and must surely be hoping that Henry Ruggs III will be the player to help that.
He did take a little bit of a shot at Carr in that blurb but he at least acknowledged that the quarterback is a good deep thrower when he airs it out. Also, are we going to completely ignore the fact that Carr hasn’t had a good deep threat to throw to over that last few seasons? In 2020, he’s already airing it out more with the addition of Ruggs. Now, to be fair, their connection hasn’t been perfect yet but they are still working out their chemistry.
Even without a solid deep threat, PFF rated Carr as the most accurate deep ball passer in the NFL heading into last season. Yes, everybody would like to see Carr take more shots but that’s not how Jon Gruden runs his offense. He wants to run the ball, throw it to tight ends and eat the clock. He only likes to air it out on occasion. That doesn’t mean that Carr “doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
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