Ever since last year, the Las Vegas Raiders have been allegedly planning to part ways with quarterback Derek Carr, but so far it hasn’t happened in spite of the constant turmoil of trade talks. Why?
NFL insider Benjamin Allbright recently said that Carr is being heavily shopped at the NFL Scouting Combine. It hasn’t been the only time that the quarterback has been linked to playing for a team other than the Raiders. Not too long ago, there was a report about the Bears showing interest in his services. Let’s not also forget this goes back to last offseason, when Jason La Canfora of CBS said that Carr was likely being traded.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire and the fact head coach Jon Gruden won’t commit to Carr the way Broncos general manager John Elway did with Drew Lock does nothing to put the blaze out. Raiders general manager Mike Mayock doesn’t help matters either when he says that they aren’t “actively” shopping Carr.
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Opinion: Why the Raiders are ‘heavily’ shopping Derek Carr
Maybe Gruden is indeed trolling the media and the joke is on us for trying too hard to read between the lines, “Hey Mike, wanna see your Twitter timeline lit? Let’s leak we are shopping Carr.” Or perhaps they seriously want to start over at quarterback, but his market hasn’t materialized yet.
It’s possible other teams have asked about Carr’s availability but at this point have only offered a beer keg in exchange for the signal-caller.
On the other side of the coin, Raiders brass might want to deceive the rest of the league in order to conceal their plan and Mayock and Gruden are smiling wherever they are and patting themselves on the back.
There’s one last possibility and it’s rather worrisome. What if the coach and the general manager sincerely don’t know what they want to do yet? It would be totally plausible they have a burden of choice kind of situation in their hands and if that’s the case, they need to decide what they want to do at quarterback.
When the smoke clears, what the Raiders do with Derek Carr will have been in the organization’s best interest for the team. In the meantime, there isn’t an accurate way to describe what is happening this offseason when it comes to the quarterback, but at least, boring isn’t it.
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