2 years after releasing Carr, are Raiders better off at QB?

The Raiders, two years after moving on from the quarterback who holds every key passing record in franchise history, will cross paths with Derek Carr again Sunday when they face the Saints.

Carr won’t play because of a left-hand injury, but it still figures to be an emotional reunion. As well as an ironic one.

The Raiders are no closer to finding their long-term quarterback than they were when they benched Carr with two games remaining in the 2022 season. And Carr, 33, finds himself in familiar territory with the Saints.

New Orleans, like the Raiders two years ago, is facing a difficult decision. The team could continue to pay Carr, a solid but not game-changing quarterback, significant money. Or the Saints could try to rebuild their roster around a young passer or a more cost-effective veteran.

Carr’s $30 million salary for 2025 becomes fully guaranteed if he is on New Orleans’ roster March 14. He also gets a $10 million roster bonus March 15. Add that to what Carr has already made with the Saints, and the team will have paid almost $100 million to a quarterback that has a 14-13 record as a starter in New Orleans.

The club could also save $30 million by walking away from Carr or trading him at the end of the season. That makes his future with the Saints anything but secure.

Deja vu

Carr’s situation in New Orleans is eerily similar to the one Raiders general manager Dave Ziegler and coach Josh McDaniels faced near the end of the 2022 season.

McDaniels had lost faith in Carr as a championship-caliber quarterback. But he continued to start the veteran with the playoffs still a possibility.

McDaniels and Ziegler then benched Carr once the Raiders’ postseason hopes were dashed. They didn’t want to risk him suffering an injury and triggering a clause in his contract that would have guaranteed all his 2023 salary and some of his 2024 salary.

“Those aren’t easy conversations, but that’s the nature of the position,” McDaniels said at the time of the benching. “I couldn’t be more complimentary of him the way he handled it. “This is an A-1 class human being, and he’s obviously meant a lot to this place for a long time.”

The Raiders released Carr two months later. He went on to sign a four-year, $150 million contract with the Saints.

It was an unceremonious end for a quarterback who consistently maintained he would rather retire than play for a franchise other than the Raiders.

Carr’s love for the team was unquestioned. He just couldn’t lead it to success. Carr was 63-79 as a starter with the Raiders and led them to the playoffs just twice, despite being the franchise’s all-time leader in passing yards (35,222) and passing touchdowns (217).

Moving on

The decision to turn the page was simple for Ziegler and McDaniels.

They were not interested in paying top dollar for a quarterback in Carr that they felt they had a limited ceiling. They wanted more resources to devote to the rest of the roster, which they felt had significant holes.

Landing Carr’s replacement proved to be the tough part, however.

The Raiders have started six quarterbacks since Carr was benched. There is still no franchise-changing leader in sight.

The team, according to a source familiar with the Raiders’ thinking at the time, had seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady atop their wish list for the 2023 season. They hoped to sign Brady as a free agent and develop a young passer behind him.

It made sense. McDaniels and Brady, now a Raiders minority owner, experienced tons of success together when McDaniels was the Patriots quarterbacks coach and/or offensive coordinator for 15 seasons.

There was just one hitch. Brady, then 45, decided to retire in February 2023. That took the Raiders’ top option off the board before free agency even started.

The team pivoted and signed quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo to a three-year, $72.75 million contract. Garoppolo had also played for McDaniels in New England, but their reunion was troubled from the outset.

The Raiders discovered a foot injury Garoppolo suffered during the 2022 season had not fully healed while in the process of signing him. He needed surgery, so the team amended the deal.

In retrospect, the Raiders may have been better off walking away. Garoppolo passed a physical at the beginning of training camp, but never looked right. He was benched eight games into the 2023 season and was released once the year wrapped up.

Draft problems

The Raiders never intended for Garoppolo to be anything more than a bridge quarterback. They wanted to find their long-term solution at the position in the draft.

That didn’t happen in 2023. The Raiders held the seventh pick in the draft and didn’t want to meet the Bears’ asking price for the top selection.

The Panthers ultimately traded the ninth pick, the 63rd pick, a 2024 first-round pick, a 2025 second-round pick and wide receiver DJ Moore to Chicago for the right to select quarterback Bryce Young, who has been inconsistent in the NFL.

The Texans stayed put with the second pick and took quarterback C.J. Stroud.

The Raiders ended up taking defensive end Tyree Wilson seventh overall. They didn’t select a quarterback until they grabbed Aidan O’Connell in the fourth round.

He’s been a decent, but not great quarterback his two seasons in Las Vegas. Wilson, who has 7½ sacks in 31 games, has yet to develop into an impact player.

Long-term answer

The Raiders’ issues replacing Carr played a huge role in Ziegler and McDaniels losing their jobs Oct. 31, 2023.

General manager Tom Telesco and coach Antonio Pierce were named their full-time replacements at the start of this past offseason. Both understood they needed to improve at quarterback. Pierce made it clear at the NFL scouting combine in February he believed the Raiders had to think big at the position.

“I would hope whoever we draft, that’s the route we go, that’s who the starter becomes,” Pierce said. “You don’t want to put a Band-Aid in that position. That’s old. That’s old, man. I think the Raiders, we’ve seen that enough in this organization.”

The Raiders, however, held the 13th pick after they went on a late-season surge with Pierce as their interim coach. That left them unable to take one of the draft’s top three quarterbacks in USC’s Caleb Williams, LSU’s Jayden Daniels and North Carolina’s Drake Maye.

The quarterback-hungry Bears, Commanders and Patriots took the three passers with the top three picks in the draft.

The Raiders did like Washington’s Michael Penix Jr., but it’s unclear if his injury history in college would have prevented the team from taking him at No. 13.

That became a moot point anyway when the Falcons surprised everyone by selecting Penix eighth overall. The Vikings also took Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy 10th overall and the Broncos grabbed Oregon’s Bo Nix 12th overall before the Raiders picked.

The team signed veteran Gardner Minshew in free agency as an insurance policy, but it became clear when Minshew competed with O’Connell for the starting job in training camp the club was just biding its time at quarterback. Nothing that’s happened this season has changed that reality.

The Raiders will be back to the drawing board at quarterback this offseason. Moving on from Carr was the easy part. Finding a long-term answer that’s better than him has proved far more challenging.

Contact Vincent Bonsignore at vbonsignore@reviewjournal.com . Follow @VinnyBonsignore on X.