Is Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr overrated? ESPN NFL Insider Andrew Healy seems to think so.
It's understandable why Raiders fans are excited about Carr. He threw for 3,270 yards with 21 touchdowns and just 12 interceptions as a rookie. He performed well in the red zone and in fourth quarters (not always easy, regardless of experience) and led Oakland to three wins in their last six games. With rookies Amari Cooper and Clive Walford added to the passing game, many expect a breakout year from the young signal-caller.
But Healy is not a believer.
"So what's not to like?" he wrote. "Carr appears to be a cautionary tale about focusing on the wrong numbers. While Carr and [Andrew] Luck posted almost identical rookie years by traditional passer rating (Carr 76.6, Luck 76.5), their QBRs were quite different (Carr 38.4, Luck 65.2). And forget about Carr getting better as the season progressed: During the Raiders' 3-3 stretch to end the season, he posted a minus-16.6 percent mark in Football Outsiders' defense-adjusted value over average (DVOA) metric...That was worse than his performance during the Raiders' 0-10 start to the year (-13.8 percent)."
Those numbers may be a bit too "inside baseball" for casual fans, but they do point to an important issue. Quarterbacks drafted outside the top ten rarely succeed in the NFL; Drew Brees, Tom Brady and Russell Wilson are extreme exceptions. Carr, a second-rounder, may have performed better than his first-round counter parts (Blake Bortles, Johnny Manziel & Teddy Bridgewater) overall last year, but was it just a flash in the pan?
"Then there is Carr's gaudy-for-a-rookie TD/INT ratio, slightly better than even [Ben] Roethlisberger's 17/11 output in his great 2004 rookie campaign," Healy wrote. "This too appears to be a mirage: Carr's touchdowns were often of the gimme variety - very short passes when other teams might have run it in.
"For the season, Carr's touchdown passes traveled an average of just 6.5 yards through the air, compared to a league average of 11.9 yards. In fact, nearly half of Carr's TDs (11 of 21) came on throws within three yards of the line, while only 31 percent of all other quarterbacks' scores came on such passes."
No hopeful fan should just assume Carr is ready to be a franchise quarterback and no critic should already conclude that he is doomed to fail. He's a young QB with both talent and flaws, but you could say that about almost every passer who's entered the NFL. Let's take a wait-and-see approach this year.
