Derek Carr and the Las Vegas Raiders went into Arrowhead Stadium and came away victorious, silencing the critics with a dominant performance.
Derek Carr and the Las Vegas Raiders have been hearing it all offseason. All the talk about Tom Brady replacing Carr after he decided to leave the New England Patriots, followed by plenty of talk about the Raiders trading up to draft Tua Tagovailoa or Justin Herbert.
Then, when the team signed Marcus Mariota, all the talk was about how he would come in and steal Carr’s job because “he knew how to win at Arrowhead”.
We saw first hand today that when he has a little bit of help from his defense and his weapons, Derek Carr knows how to win at Arrowhead Stadium too. It started off well enough with a confident drive to set up a Daniel Carlson field goal to take a 3-0 lead, but quickly took a nightmarish turn.
On the next Raiders drive after falling behind 7-3, Carr sailed a pass over a wide-open Darren Waller and threw his first interception since his last trip to Kansas City in Week 13 of the 2019 season.
Many Raiders fans were thinking “here we go again,” as Carr has indeed struggled at KC, throwing for nearly twice as many interceptions as touchdowns in his previous six games there and not winning a single game. What is often lost in that conversation is the obvious fact that the Chiefs have just been a better team than the Raiders in every year of Carr’s career.
They have been a Super Bowl contender or in the case of last year’s team, a Super Bowl-winning team while the Raiders have gone through three head coaches and three rebuilds since 2014.
History aside, things were looking bleak for the Raiders as the Chiefs took an 11-point lead after the interception but that dark cloud quickly dissipated. Carr did what he does best and took absolute control of the offense and the game and willed his team back into the game.