The Las Vegas Raiders can go into the 2020 NFL season with confidence as they’ll have the most accurate passer in the AFC West. First and foremost, let’s clear something up. We’re not saying the Raiders have the best quarterback in their division. Rather, the evidence and numbers show that Derek Carr is the most accurate signal-caller. It would be asinine to claim otherwise as Patrick Mahomes just led his team to a Super Bowl victory.
Another thing to keep in mind is that two of the other teams in the AFC West will have new starters in 2020. Drew Lock will be starting in his first full season for the Denver Broncos. As for the Los Angeles Chargers, they’ll roll with Tyrod Taylor to start the season. Due to these circumstances, we’ll exclude these two from a comparison as we’ll be judging strictly from the 2019 season. We aren’t saying they should be overlooked. In fact, Lock showed promise at the season’s end and we know Taylor can be a solid starter.
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The Throwaways By Derek Carr
Mahomes for his part started 14 games in 2019. Meanwhile, Carr started all 16 games for the Silver and Black. One of the categories in which Mahomes does have Carr beat is when it comes to passes thrown away. Raider Nation is relentless to point out how Carr throws passes away, while Mahomes threw away 19 passes compared to Carr’s astounding 28. At first sight, it might not be a good look. However, this helps Carr’s accuracy and overall completion percentage. It’s better that your team’s quarterback throw these passes away if there’s no play to be had, forcing it, and possibly turning it into a turnover is much worse. It seems to be more nitpicking from fans who are frustrated with Carr. Nevertheless, numbers don’t lie.
Bad Throws By Derek Carr
Another way in which quarterbacks are judged is the number of bad throws they have in a season. It may be surprising to Carr detractors but he’s by far, the most cautious passer, which cuts back in these types of throws. Mahomes had a total of 85 bad throws to go along with an 18.3% percentage of poor throws per pass attempt. By comparison, Carr had only 53 of these bad throws and in the same category as Mahomes, his percentage was 11%. The percentages clearly are on Carr’s side, which is more amazing when you realize Mahomes threw that many bad passes in two games less than the Raiders quarterback.
The pressure that these two passers are under is insane when you look at all the elite pass rushers that play in the AFC West. It’s important to realize this because it paints an even more positive picture for Carr. He was blitzed a total of 107 times while Mahomes was blitzed 108 times. Both quarterbacks had a total average of 2.5 seconds to make a throw before the pocket collapsed. This translated into Mahomes having identical protection, yet, he was outproduced by Carr, who also happened to have an inferior receiver group.
Final Words
There’s another stat that justifies Carr being labeled the most accurate passer. It is his percentage of on-target throws per pass attempt, which sat at 82.6%. In 2019, Mahomes closed out with 77.2% in the regular season. Carr’s on-target throws, which would’ve hit their intended receivers, were 399, Mahomes came in behind with 359. Perhaps, the issue isn’t Carr but rather the quality of his weapons, something the Raiders rectified for the 2020 season. While stats are certainly nice and as stated before, they don’t lie, Mahomes holds the biggest stat over Carr, and that’s Super Bowl victories. If you’re keeping track of that numbers, Mahomes leads it 1-0.
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*Top Photo: Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images
