Behind the numbers: Derek Carr breaks Ken Stabler’s all-time TD record
When and where did Derek Carr throw those touchdowns?
It may surprise some fans to know that Derek Carr, according to Pro Football Reference, has 20 game-winning drives in his career, and had seven in the 2016 season alone. Carr may be unfairly maligned as a quarterback who puts up statistics when they don’t mean much, but the numbers and stats disprove that.
Carr has thrown 23 of the 151 touchdowns in the first quarter, 50 in the second, 29 in the third, 48 in the fourth, and one in overtime. Of the 48 in the fourth quarter, 22 of those have been to give the Raiders the lead and seven have been to tie the game.
Those 22 touchdowns to give the Raiders the lead came in 19 games and the Raiders won all but one of them. In the 7 games where Carr tied it up, the Raiders won four of them, so when Carr throws a touchdown in the fourth quarter, it usually leads to a victory.
After accounting for those 22, that leaves 19 that had the Raiders still trailing but seven of those put the Raiders within one score of their opponent so they would hardly be classified as “garbage time”. Derek Carr has been the architect of a multitude of game winning or game tying drives and he has done so with a less than spectacular defense backing him up on the other side of the ball.
The second misconception is that Carr struggles late in the year, perhaps because of the cold weather. He may not have the best record in Arrowhead in December, but he has thrown 30 touchdowns in Week 14 or later and has a 82-69 split in the first 8 weeks versus the second. Carr also appears almost equally comfortable throwing touchdowns on the road as he is at home with an 84-67 split in that category.
Lastly, lets take a look at who Derek Carr has thrown those touchdowns against.